Tints and Shades

I'm always dreaming up ideas for teaching BASIC paint-mixing skills to my younger students. Yes, I teach mixing tints and shades with my littlest of students, my Kindergartners! This was a project that I did on the fly with them and I actually really liked how they turned out and put some of them in our "Best of the Best Art Show" at the end of the year last year!

I did this on a 9x12 sheet of paper, and pre-folded it into 6 equal squares for the kids. On their paint palettes I put ROYGBV paints, along with white and black. (I used liquid tempera, it mixes the easier!) The kids drew two parallel wavy lines across the top three squares and again across the bottom three squares. Inside each "wave" they painted the original color ROYGBV in spectrum order.

Above each wave (original color) they mixed a shade of that color, and below each color they mixed a tint of that color. I must say that the hardest part of this project was making sure that all shades didn't turn out pitch black (they dipped just the tippy-top of their brush into the black and mixed).

*Keep in mind that the three examples I have here are pretty darn good. MANY MANY of them weren't able to stay in the lines, etc...so of course this is adaptable for probably up to third grade! I didn't focus on that so much as the paint mixing.*

A VOILA! A great lesson on spectrum order, tints, and shades :)

Happy creating!