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Lesson plan Grade 1 Art & Music

Applegarth Reservoir Blues: Mixing Tints for a Depth Chart

A grade 1 art lesson on tints: students mix blue with white to paint three swatches, sort them light to dark on a class reservoir chart, and caption one card.

Objectives

  1. Students will mix blue paint with white paint to make a lighter tint.
  2. Students will sort painted swatches into light, medium, and dark categories.
  3. Students will write a caption card naming the reservoir and one fact about it.

Vocabulary

Reservoir
A human-made lake, usually created by a dam, that stores water for later. Reservoirs supply cities and farms and help control floods.

Also: tint, swatch, shallow, deep

Teacher overview

Applegarth is a fictional town that keeps its drinking water in a reservoir behind a low dam, and a reservoir looks pale where it is shallow near the shore and much darker out where it is deep. This lesson uses that observation as a reason to mix tints: each student paints three card stock swatches, one straight blue and two lightened with different amounts of white, and the class assembles the swatches into a large depth chart with the palest at the shore end and the darkest at the deep end. A common misconception is that adding water to blue paint makes a tint. Water only thins the paint and lets the paper show through, while white pigment actually changes the color, so the modeling step has students compare a watered stripe against a white-mixed stripe side by side before they commit to their own three cards.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Show the class a photograph or a simple painting of a lake or reservoir seen from above, and ask students to point to the part of the water that looks lightest and the part that looks darkest. Tell them the light part is shallow and the dark part is deep, and that the Applegarth reservoir holds the drinking water for the whole town.

Read-aloud and problem (8 min): Read a short teacher-written passage aloud about the Applegarth reservoir: rain and melting snow fill it, a pipe carries water from it to the treatment plant, and the town asks people to use less water when the reservoir drops. Post three facts from the reading on the board as short sentences, since students will draw on them for their caption cards. Then state the art problem, which is that the class needs to paint a chart showing the reservoir getting deeper from the shore outward, using only blue and white paint.

Model mixing (7 min): On a paper plate, put out a spoon of blue. Beside it, mix a second puddle of blue with a small amount of white, and a third with a larger amount of white. Paint a stripe of each on card stock and hold them up in order. Then paint a fourth stripe of blue thinned with water only, and ask the class which of the two pale stripes still looks like solid paint. Name the white mixtures tints.

Paint the swatches (12 min): Give each student three squares of card stock labeled A, B, and C on the back. Students paint square A with blue only, square B with blue plus a little white, and square C with blue plus more white. Circulate and check that squares are filled edge to edge and that brushes are rinsed between mixtures. Set the swatches aside to dry.

Sort and count (8 min): Draw three columns on the chart paper and head them light, medium, and dark. Students bring their dry swatches up and place each one in the column where it belongs, so every column fills with real class work. Count the swatches in each column aloud together, write the three counts at the bottom of the columns, and ask which column has the most and how many more that is than the smallest column. Because every student painted one of each, a correct sort gives three equal counts, so accept "they are the same, 0 more," and if the counts differ, use the difference to hunt for the swatches that landed in the wrong column. This is the formative check: if more than five students place a white-heavy swatch in the dark column, stop and hold two swatches side by side before continuing.

Caption and share (5 min): Each student writes one caption card that names the Applegarth reservoir, gives one fact from the read-aloud, and ends with a closing sentence. Tape the cards along the bottom edge of the chart and read three of them aloud to close the lesson.

Applegarth Reservoir Blues: Mixing Tints for a Depth Chart — Grade 1 Art & Music
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

My Swatch Cards. You will paint three squares. Square A is blue only. Square B is blue plus a little white. Square C is blue plus more white.

  1. Look at square A and square B. Which one is lighter?
  2. Put your three squares in order from lightest to darkest. Which square is darkest?
  3. The chart shows shallow water at one end and deep water at the other end. Which square goes at the deep end?
  4. Adding white to a color makes a tint. Adding water to a color makes it thin. Which square is a tint, A or C?
  5. Your teacher counts the swatches in the light column and the dark column. Which question asks for the difference between the two counts: how many in all, or how many more?
  6. Write one caption sentence. Name the Applegarth reservoir and tell one fact you heard in the read-aloud.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Square B. White paint was added to square B, so it is lighter than the plain blue of square A.
  2. Answer: Square A. Square A has no white in it at all, so it stays the darkest of the three.
  3. Answer: Square A. The deep end of the chart shows deep water, and deep water looks darkest.
  4. Answer: Square C. Square C is blue mixed with white, and mixing white into a color makes a tint.
  5. Answer: How many more. That question compares two columns and asks for the difference between them, while how many in all asks for a total of both columns together.
  6. Answer: Accept any sentence that names the Applegarth reservoir and gives one fact from the read-aloud, such as that rain and snow fill it or that a pipe carries water from it to the treatment plant.

Differentiation

Support

Premix the two tints in labeled cups so these students paint rather than measure, and give them squares with a drawn border to fill. Let them place their swatches on the chart with a partner who says the column name aloud, and accept a dictated caption for the card.

Extension

Ask these students to mix a fourth swatch that falls between two of their own squares, place it in the correct column, and write one sentence explaining how much white they added to land in between. Have them also label the chart columns with an arrow showing the shore end and the deep end.

ELL supports

Post the words light, medium, and dark above the three columns with a painted example under each, and say the pair shallow and deep while pointing to the two ends of the chart. Provide a caption sentence frame with the reservoir name already written, and allow the fact to be drawn and labeled with a single word.

Extensions

Hang the finished chart in the hallway and add a row of swatches each season so the class can compare tints painted months apart. Groups can also repaint their three swatches on a long strip to make a single graded band from shore to deep water, which introduces blending without needing any new paint colors.