SUNSET SILHOUETTE
by Barbara Sonek

GRADES: K to 6

This is an easy project for the primary grades. It teaches students the primary colours as well learning how to mix primary colours to make the secondary colours. The project is very satisfying for the students, because it is not just an academic lesson, but allows students to be creative. The end result is art!

MATERIALS

• Red....Yellow....Blue Poster Paints
• 1/2 inch wide paint brushes
• heavy white drawing paper: 8 1/2"x11" or 9"x12"
• plastic cups for the paint
• black construction paper
• water
• newspapers
• scissors
• rulers
• pencils
• white glue or a glue stick
• a cylindrical object (i.e. a soup can)
• pictures of sunsets (best if over water)

DIRECTIONS

• Holding the paper horizontally, have the students measure down about 5" and draw a horizontal line across the sheet.
• Have the student use a cylindrical object to make a semi-circle someplace on the horizontal line, (a soup can works great). This is going to be the basis for the setting sun.
• Show the students the pictures of sunsets and what colours are in the sky...the reds, the purples, the blues and the yellow gold of the sun. Talk to them about the colours that they see.
• Tell them about the primary colours red, yellow, and blue, and how the students can make all of the other colours just by using the primary colours. (Red and blue make purple, yellow and red make orange, blue and yellow make green).
• Pour some of the primary colours into the plastic cups, and show them how to mix the other colours. The paint should be vibrant, but thin, so it could be used almost as a watercolor.
• Have the students paint the sun yellow.
• Now wet down the paper so that the colours will bleed together. (Bleeding is having one colour run into the next so that there isn't a hard line separating them).
• Next, colour around the sun, going from orange, to red, to violet-red to purple to blue. It will look something like a rainbow when finished. The part under the sun and sky is water, and is blue with the colours of the sunsets reflection. A golden path is on the water from the setting sun. Let their imaginations take hold.
• With black construction paper, the students can draw a palm tree on an island, or a boat in the water, or anything appropriate for the scene.
• They then cut out the shapes, and glue them down onto their sunset paintings.

The paintings look best when mounted on a black background.

Lesson plan courtesy of Barabara Sonek
Homepage: Barbara's World Tour