Hot Dogs and Cool Cats Kindergarten Lesson

I found this idea on Pinterest and had to try it as a lesson on warm and cool colors.  I don't like to use lessons from Pinterest simply because I often come to school and see the project already done by a class room teacher who also found it!  Then, I have to quickly change my lesson so as not to duplicate. However, with this project I felt confident that no teachers would try it or be interested in teaching warm/cool colors and drawing a dog and cat with their students. All I can say is that THIS LESSON IS AWESOME! 

The materials are simple, the kids went crazy for the dog and cat directed drawing, and picking out the right marker colors was a great deal of fun for them.


First, we used permanent sharpie black markers to draw

the dog, face and paws only on one half of our white paper. 
Then the Kinders were asked what colors were hot:
thinking of fire or sunshine or a hot
stove. The next job was to find all kinds of orange, yellow
and red markers in their box and put them on the table. These
were water based markers, not permanent.
Adding hairy scribbles all over the dog with hot colors was
an easy way to give our dog a body without drawing it.

On the other half of the paper we drew a cat face and paws.
Now all the hot colors were put back into the box and cool colors
were discussed and sorted out. It is amazing how much the students
enjoyed finding the right marker colors for each half of their picture.
So cute!

 
I had them practice their writing by putting the words "HOT" and "COOL" above 
the appropriate pictures.

The final surprising step to this process that the kids thought was
like magic was using plain water and a brush to blend the markers
a bit and add a tail to each animal. Washing brush out
THOROUGHLY between hot and cold color blending is very important.
Not only is this a great lesson on color, but the pictures are
absolutely adorable when drawn by our Kindergarten artists!