Lesson plan Grade 1 Art & Music
Clear, Cloudy, Muddy: Painting Mulberry Bend Creek
A 40-minute grade 1 art lesson where students mix three shades of blue to match three jars of clear, cloudy, and muddy water and caption a painted strip.
Objectives
- Students will mix three shades of one color by adding more or less brown to blue.
- Students will match each painted shade to a jar of clear, cloudy, or muddy water.
- Students will write or dictate two sentences telling what makes creek water muddy.
Vocabulary
Key words: shade, clear, cloudy, muddy
Teacher overview
Creeks run nearly clear on ordinary days and turn brown after a hard rain, because water running across bare ground carries loose soil along with it. This lesson pairs one art skill, changing a color by adding a little more or a little less of a second color, with that single water idea. Students paint a strip of three boxes showing the same creek water clear, cloudy, and muddy, then caption the strip with two sentences.
Fill and label the three demonstration jars before students arrive and drop a coin into each one. First graders judge "can I see through this" far more reliably by hunting for the coin than by studying the water, and the painted strip then becomes a copy of something they have already looked at rather than something they must picture in their heads. Give every pair its own mixing plate. Students who stir brown paint straight into the shared rinse cup end up with one gray for all three boxes, which is the failure this lesson runs into most often.
Procedure
Look at the three jars (6 min): Set the jars where the whole class can see them. Jar 1 holds plain tap water, Jar 2 holds water with half a spoon of soil stirred in, and Jar 3 holds water with three spoons of soil stirred in hard. Read aloud: "A coin sits at the bottom of each jar. Point to every jar where you can still see the coin." Take the answers by show of hands. Then tell the class that in the town of Mulberry Bend, the water plant takes water out of the creek beside the school, and the crew there has an easier day on clear days than on muddy ones.
Name the three shades (6 min): On a scrap sheet, paint one patch of plain blue. Beside it, paint a second patch of blue with one brush tip of brown stirred in, and a third with three brush tips of brown stirred in. Give students the art word shade: one color can have many shades, and an artist makes a darker shade by adding a little of a dark color, such as brown or black. Line the three patches up beside the three jars and ask one student to point to the patch that matches Jar 3.
Mix and paint the strip (18 min): Each student folds a paper strip into three boxes and numbers them 1, 2, and 3. Box 1 gets blue alone. Box 2 gets blue with one brush tip of brown. Box 3 gets blue with three brush tips of brown. Circulate while pairs mix on their plates. The common error is loading the brush with brown and painting box 3 first, which leaves no clean blue for box 1, so remind tables to work left to right and to rinse between boxes.
Caption the strip (7 min): Below the boxes, students write or dictate two sentences: one telling what makes creek water turn muddy, and one telling what people have to do about it. Model two examples on chart paper, such as "Rain washes dirt into the creek" and "Muddy water is harder to clean." Scribe for students who dictate, and let confident writers add a third sentence.
Share and check (3 min): Students hold their strips up facing you. Read aloud: "Hold up the box that shows the creek right after a hard rain." Every strip should show box 3. If more than five students hold up box 1, stir Jar 3 again in front of the class and repeat the coin question before the next art period, because the color order has not yet stuck.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support
Pre-fold the paper strips and pre-number the boxes so the whole work period goes to mixing and painting. Offer a two-box version, clear and muddy, for students who lose the middle step. Provide the caption as a sentence frame with the first two words written in, such as "Rain washes ___."
Extension
Ask students to add a fourth box showing what the water looks like after it sits still overnight, then paint that shade and explain in one sentence why the soil sinks to the bottom. Students who finish early can paint a small key strip labeling each shade with its name.
ELL supports
Teach clear, cloudy, and muddy with the jars in hand before any paint appears, and have the class repeat each word while pointing at the matching jar. Accept captions dictated in a student's home language with one English color word added during scribing. Post the three painted patches with their words above the sink so the vocabulary stays visible all week.
Extensions
Save the strips and repeat the coin test with a jar of water that an adult collects from a real puddle after the next heavy rain, then have students hold their strips beside the new jar and point to the box that matches. A short thank-you note to the school custodian, who sweeps the grit off the blacktop before it washes away, gives the lesson a second real audience.