#7-Art Word of the Week: Colour

This week’s art word is COLOUR! How fabulously exciting the world of colour is. Whether you are thinking about your favourite colour shirt, your favourite colour nail polish, or the colour of your car, the word is simply inescapable.  We define so many things by colour and categorize items according to their shade, hue or contrast.  Shirrmacher and Fox (2009) define colour as “the visual sensation of light caused by stimulating the cones of the retina” (p. 364). 

(I did this on paint!)

The first category of food that came to my mind was fruit.  I mean I can’t say healthy foods are my absolute favourite (I love candy, chocolate, fatty foods).  However by selecting fruit as my category of interest, I was able to conjure up so many different types, shapes and colours.  Fruits are often extremely bright and vibrant, which is probably what attracts me to eating them, besides being sweet of course.

Red: strawberry, cherry, raspberry, red delicious apple, cranberry

Orange: cantaloupe, orange, mango, tangerine, clementine, peach, nectarine, tangelo

Yellow: lemon, banana, pineapple

Green: honeydew, lime, kiwi (though the outside is brown), Granny Smith apples

Blue: blueberries

Pink: watermelon, grapefruit (could also be red), guava (the inside), dragonfruit

After categorizing these different fruits by colour, I realized that so many of them could fall into multiple categories.  Watermelons and guavas for example are green on the outside but pink on the inside.  The various types of apples have different colour skin, but all generally have a pale colour inside.  Kiwi is a great example of falling into different categories, since its skin is an ugly brown colour, but its flesh is a beautiful green.  I know that many vegetables are actually fruit and the official categories for fruits are pretty specific.  However I like to categorize fruit using colour because I believe that a part of eating is with our visual sense. My absolute favourite fruit are raspberries, which is why I chose to sketch them, along with a strawberries, blueberries and blackberries.

EDUCATORS
Utilizing fruit is a great way for children to learn fundamental categorizing skills. Being able to distinguish their different colours will allow for children to gain an understanding of grouping objects together.  Whether it is a trip to the grocery store, as I went on during the summer at my daycare job, or snacks in the classroom, exploration of various fruits is a fun way for children to experience different types of fruits, shapes, and of course, COLOUR!

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J.E. (2009). Art and creative development for young children 
       (6^th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Delmar