The Secret Colors of Plants

From her experience of purchasing flowers, Mrs. Wang found that most of the shops didn’t provide packages that would match the colors of the bouquets. And the packages used to be too colorful to dignify the grace of flowers. After discussing the suitability of colors with the class in the art and design course for one semester, Mrs. Wang assigned a task to the class: using the materials at hand to make a package that can properly hold and fit the flowers. What would be the priority for the students: the colors which can fit flowers better or their own color preferences?

The art and design course of Jinhua Junior High School, Kang-Ching-Lung Streets Project, were developed by all the art teachers in the school. To take a closer look at where they live, the teachers and the students walked out of the classroom, planned the routes for exploration, and conducted field studies in the neighborhood around campus. By wandering on the streets, observing and recording various architectures built in different ages, they were impressed with the findings: there were so many different styles, forms and textures of buildings on the streets. Back in school, they moved forward to discuss the suitability of materials and tried to find a better replacement for the buildings. Slowing down the pace and paying more attention to the details on the way to school, the students were amazed at what had been overlooked by them before.

In the Plantae, there are colors that cannot be seen by the human naked eye. To dig more into the essence of colors, Mrs. Chang led the students to walk out of the classroom to take a closer look at plants. They brought the beautiful specimens they collected back to the lab for interdisciplinary experiments and color analysis. After the interesting exploration, they were surprised that the plants they see on campus every day consist of more colors than they had imagined. By extracting colors from the plants and observing the stratification phenomenon, the students learned the variety and complexity of how nature generates colors. To Mrs. Chan, one of the purposes of the art and design course is to break conventions, and the class indeed helped the students to realize that leaves and flowers are not merely in red and green. Through these scientific experiments, the kids’ competence in rational observation was built up. Moreover, the course also triggered them to hold a bolder attitude toward exploring more possibilities.

Due to the scarcity of educational resources in the remote and rural regions of Taiwan, Mrs. Lu simultaneously lectures in three schools in Yuli, Hualien. She found most of the children were from tribes, and their families living from farming lived in symbiosis with the land. Therefore, their lifestyle was strongly connected to solar terms and seasonal food. When teaching colors to the students, Mrs. Lu managed to bring food into the class to provide a different perspective on colors. By rearrange the colors on the dinning table, the lesson attempted to help the students to discover new significances of local food. During the process of exploring colors in season, the kids gradually realized how food colored their life and even showed their true colors.