a favorite lesson

I use the book, First Painter, by Kathryn Lansky to start a discussion with my fifth grade students about the origins of art. We discuss the possible reasons that paintings might have been made on cave walls when little time was available for leisure activities. We study the Lascaux and Chauvet cave paintings. We discuss the simple expressive lines and shapes used to create the images. We look at the basic components of paint, binders and pigments, and learn about some of the different types of each. We use a mortar and pestle to grind some local sandstone and other "soft"rocks and produce some red, yellow, brown, and orange pigments. We also break down some charred wood to get a black pigment. We use egg yolk as a binder to mix our own paint and then paint animal images on rocks.