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I am very pleased at the amount of success students had with this project! We began these paintings when third grade was in the middle of their unit about rocks and minerals. They experienced an in-school field trip where they got to go mining for real gemstones! Each student took home a collection of beautiful rocks. The students were so excited when I told them they would get to design their own crystals! One of my favorite parts of this project was that I got to sneak in a lot of math skills. Students got lots of practice using rulers, though we used them more for making straight lines than measuring. We also talked some about lines, line segments, and vertices. I also briefly reviewed types of angles with them. Also, this drawing process was more complicated than our usual projects, so it was a good opportunity to practice following multi-step directions- which is a critical test-taking skill! After the crystal drawings were completed, then we talked about color. Students were required to plan a specific color scheme for this project- they couldn't just pick whatever colors they wanted. They needed to select a group of three analogous colors- these are colors that are all together on the color wheel. These were the colors of paint they would use. Next, students had to identify the complement of their analogous colors. Complementary colors are directly across from each other on the color wheel. It means they are like opposites. For example, red and green are complements, and I tell students that when you put red next to green, it makes the red look the "reddest" it can look. And green next to red makes the green look even "greener." Students first used a crayon in the complementary color to color a few sections- this was our "accent color". Next, they painted the other spaces with the analogous colors. Can you see how the contrast makes each color "pop"?
To give these crystals a little sparkle, students traced their lines with metallic markers. And it's hard to tell in the photos, but there's also a little glitter added to some of the spaces! The last step added a little scientific flair- students pretended this was a new gemstone they had just discovered, and they had to give their stone a name, tell how much money it was worth, and also tell one interesting fact- maybe something about how the stone was formed, where it was found, or how old the stone was. They came up with some really creative answers!
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