My kids love art. It is hands down their favorite thing to do. They love to create and find ways to create all day long. I love it. I love making art with them. It’s a great way for us to bond and hang out while everyone enjoys the homeschool art activity. My oldest has taken a big interest in drawing and learning about art this year and I wanted to come up with a way to incorporate this into her learning this year. Last year we did an artist study, so we are continuing on with that this year are also incorporating learning about the 7 elements of art. We are doing one element a month and, first up is Color! We decide to make a rainbow chain to study color and different groupings of color. Here is how we did it:
Supply List:
This is a really simply craft and you don’t need much, but amounts will vary based on how big you want your chain to be. I wanted to hang ours in our RV as decoration for the month, so it needed to be kind of long. Not going to lie, I did the bulk of the work on that, but I did recruit dad to come help! Here are the basics for what you need to do this Homeschool art project!
- Construction Paper
- Scissors ( or a paper cutter if you want to be fancy, I love this one!)
- Glue Sticks
- Mixed (Book about colors, optional but fun)
I precut all the strips and handed them out to my kids so that they had a set amount of rings they needed to make. Cutting the paper was hard, and I knew it would take forever with their little hands! But definitely an option to further learning if you want to go that route!
How do you make the chain?
This is your basic chain, and it is so much fun to use these for holidays, or to just spruce up a space! You will cut strips of paper, about 2 inches wide! I was able to fit 5 strips on my paper, and I just eyeballed it. You can make them bigger or thicker, but they all need to be close to the same size. Then you glue on end and attach it to the other to make a circle. Then you feed the next piece through the circle and glue it together to make a link. Then you do that over and over again until you have come to the length that you want. It will look like the picture below. Make sure that you leave the last purple off so you can combine them all at the end! You will feed that purple through YOUR last blue, and THEIR first red then glue it together to make a link.
What information did we cover?
During this homeschool art project we talked about different groupings of colors. This rainbow order chain is perfect for that because they are all showcased! Here are the terms and what they mean:
- Primary Colors: Red, Blue, Yellow. These three colors make up all the other colors and are the foundation of color. These colors also mix up to make different shades of secondary colors.
- Secondary Colors: Purple, Orange, Green. These colors are made from mixing two primary colors. Red and blue make purple, red and yellow make orange, and blue and yellow make green.
- Cool Colors: Blue, Purple, Green. These colors are used to make art look cold or calm. They are associated with serenity or peace.
- Warm Colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, These are used to show warmth in a picture. They also show feelings of energy, passion, or enthusiasm.
- Rainbow Order: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. While we didn’t use indigo in our project it was fun to talk about rainbow order, and then break it up into the different color groupings.
These terms were small enough and easy enough for the kids to work through and understand. I also had them classify their colors into the groups. So I would give them their paper and they would organize them into the group that I asked.
It was so much fun!
My kids loved this activity and I hung our chain in our RV to add some color and fun to our living situation. My girls think it is so cool and have asked if we can keep it forever. But we had to make a large chain! It was a lot of work, and so we recruited dad to help us! One of my best homeschool tips is to recruit a visitor when school is growing stale. My kids will ebb and flow with school. Sometimes its awesome and sometimes its awful. If we stay in a rut of school being awful, we recruit someone to do school with us. This could be anyone! Dad is our go to! But grandparents, cousins, aunts, friends, or neighbors work too. So if you need a good family activity this is a great one. No one needs to have any prior knowledge and it’s easy enough for any age, or ability.
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