Color Review Birds

Color review. Color review. Co-co-co-color review.  I don't know why I want to white-girl-rap that, but I totally do.  This is a total REVIEW lesson.  As in: second graders, we all already KNOW THIS.  I know you know this.  Please, Dear Jesus, let them show me that they know this.  Now don't look too closely at the above picture, or you'll see there are a few that need further review.  
I made this lesson up for several reasons: we need some review of our primary, secondary and neutral color schemes AND I got these new Playcolor paint sticks that I wanted to try out.  To see them, click here. If you'd like to purchase some, you could click here, here or here (I get nothing for recommending them, I just like them a lot).
We started out by using the Smartboard and doing a lesson called 'Let's Explore Color!' that I got from the Smart Notebook Exchange and tweaked to suit my classroom.  You can download it here, just look for the 'Let's Explore Color' one.  I found I use this file often, as it lends itself to many types of color review.  After we reviewed color schemes, we wrote them down in our sketchbooks.  We wrote primary colors and then listed them, writing the color name IN the color (wrote red with red crayon, blue with blue, etc), secondary colors and listed them, neutral colors and listed them (writing "white" in black, otherwise we couldn't see it).  Then I gave them a 5 1/2" x 5 1/2" piece of cardstock-y sort of paper that I had, and had them draw a bird, making sure to touch most of the sides (no teeny-tiny super-skinny birds).  After I checked them, they cut them out and traced them onto 6" x 18" paper that they'd folded into thirds:

The folding took a bit of work, "thirds" is a hard concept for many second graders.
I had a couple who thought they knew where this was headed
and they ended up with four spots instead of three.

 After our tracing, I let the students color their cut out birds with marker and take them home.

The Smartboard review, drawing-a-bird-tracing-the-bird-coloring-the-bird took one 40 minute class time.  The next time they came to art I had them tell me what we did and what the color schemes were (in case I forgot, you know).  We then got out our folders and our traced birds and our sketchbook notes.  I had them work with their open sketchbooks right next to their drawings so they could double-check.  Each table of four students got one of every color from the class pack except pink.  The coloring took all of two 40 minute class periods, and it really took some thinking when you only have four colors to use and you want to make it interesting.  Here are a few:

Love the primary bird on the top--he took some time on that one!

I love how the secondary one on the bottom almost glows or vibrates.

Something about these birds looks a little haughty, don't you think?

I took this lesson to my Art Teacher Camp (Fall Conference) drag-n-brag this past weekend and someone said "oh, I just love birds, don't you? I do a lot of birds" and I guess I do too!  I never realized it before, but they lend themselves so nicely to all things color, and shadows, and silhouettes . . .I'm actually going to work on a new Smart Notebook file for yet another bird project right now!

Happy art teacher-ing!