Color Theory: Hands-On Practice

You're never too old to finger paint, or, in this case, paint by hand! Students had a blast today covering sketchbooks with multi-hued hand prints. I over heard one young man say, "Haven't done that in a few years." In answer, another boy replied, laughing, "I've NEVER done THAT!"
We sometimes forget that not all children come from homes or backgrounds where they have the joy of just playing with paint or nice colored pencils, or even making mud pies in the back yard.
There was a fun twist to this "beginning of the term" activity which required groups to work collaboratively to accomplish the task of covering their sketchbooks with hand prints in primary, secondary and dark and light hues - 8 colors in all. Each group  had five small tubs containing one color of tempera paint: red, yellow and blue, as well as black and white. Each group member took charge of one color. They spread it on their palms and delivered prints to group members' sketchbooks. Then the real fun began as they gently 'high-fived' a classmate, giving palms a little back and forth twist, to create the secondaries as well as at least one light and one dark value of color. They knew they wouldn't be allowed to wash their hands until they were done, so it took some careful planning and coordination.
It was so fun to listen to the kids as they discovered and named the colors they created. There were some surprises such as the 'army' green which resulted from mixing black and yellow tempera. Tomorrow's Art Start questions: Why did black and yellow create a dark green? What does this tell us about the particular black paint we used? What IS black, anyway?