What's a Penguin to Think When He Turns PINK?!

I started a new project with my 1st grade this week.  I found this great book at Ocean State Job Lot, of all places.  It was only three dollars!

Poor Patrick the Penguin wakes up one day and finds that he's mysteriously turned pink.  There's a part of the story where he exclaims that he's a boy and boys can't be pink.  Right at that moment one of my kids piped up and said, "That's not true!  Colors are for everybody!"  I was so proud!  Patrick tries to fit in with some flamingos since they're pink birds but it doesn't turn out so well.  I won't spoil the ending, but it's a super cute book and my kids loved it.

After the story and a quick disccusion about the book - it has some great talking points about being kind, not picking on someone because they're differnent, etc. - I had the class get newspaper and a brush and set up their spaces for painting.  Once they were set up I called them to my own spot and modeled writing my name on the back of a 9 x 12 white paper with the crayons in the middle of the table.  Then I squirted a line of white tempera right onto my paper, followed by a wiggly line of orange.  I've always felt bad for orange; it's such a happy color and hardly anyone ever uses it!

I showed them how to mix the two, explaining that we were making a tint.  Patrick wound up a tint of red.  Some of the kids in the class had  shirts that were a tint of green, purple and blue so I pointed those out as examples of tints.  I told them when they got back to their own seats they would be creating their own tinted paper.  Today painting tints - next time the tinted papers would become penguins! 

To help me when once the kids are back at their spots busily writing their names I carry this paint basket around from spot to spot to distribute the tempera.

By the end of the class we had tables full of painted papers. 

I had some students ask me if they could paint designs in their papers.  So sure, why not?  Our penguins will be tinted and patterned!

Of course, there's always one that interprets "draw lines or shapes" into "scribble everywhere."

Ah well, I'm sure it will be a splendid penguin anyway.  I'll post an update when we cut and glue these into our penguins!