Meeting In divid ual Needs

Materials

• 18 x 24" ( 46 x 61 cm) white paper

• masking tape

• stubby bristle brushes

• flat trim brushes

• kitchen scrubbies with handles

• tempera paint (red, yellow, blue, green)

• paint dish for each color

• dampened washcloth, one per child

• smocks

Brenan Haedge, age twenty-four months, Happy Colors.

Two-Handed Color Mixing

Ranella Franklin

Preschool children as young hand and another flat trim brush as eighteen months and dipped in yellow paint for the right special-needs students can hand. Allow children to paint and experience the joy of mixing dip as long as they want (using both colors through a simple process of brushes at the same time). Assist painting with a paintbrush in each by presenting the correct paint dish hand. Each student will need to when they want to dip a brush into work with one adult. the paint.

If you don’t have As the colors begin to Next, provide a
teacher aides to help, _mix, _watch _for _signs _of bristle brush dipped
enlist parent volun- in yellow paint for
teers. ^awareness ^and ^build the left hand and one
on enthusiasm. dipped in blue for
the right. As the col-
ors begin to mix, watch for signs of
awareness and build on enthusiasm.
Finish by presenting different paint-
ing tools (kitchen scrubbies) dipped
into green paint. This extends inter-
est and allows children to experience
a tapping movement in contrast
to the side-to-side, up-and-down
motion they have been using with
the paintbrushes. Use a dampened
washcloth for quick cleanup of each
child’s hands.

Assessment Experience is what it’s all about at this level, so I want the children to “see” and play with the primary colors in different ways. The “Aha!” surprise of creating secondary colors lets me know that the objective has been met.

Objectives Students will mix two colors at a time with different kinds of tools and movements to discover new colors.

Ranella Franklin is an early childhood special education teacher at KinderFrogs School, a laboratory school for preschool children with developmental disabilities, on the campus of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. r.franklin@tcu. edu