Studies on painting the town

Suzie Harrison

Third-grade students at El Morro Elementary School learned how to

please the palette as part of a social studies unit on Laguna Beach.

“Every year we have kids design palettes,” teacher Tamara Wong

said. “As part of their homework, we have something like a scavenger

hunt.”

During the exploration, students look for the city’s

artist-designed palettes at specific locations and are asked to draw

them. Wong said finding the palettes also helps the students learn

map-reading skills.

“Then when they come back to the room they get to design their

own,” she said.

Megan Cavanaugh, 8, said she decided to draw a beach scene.

“Because we live near the ocean,” Megan said. “I just had to make

it Christmasy. I put ornaments on the tree and Santa hats on the sand

and a fish.”

Megan said she made the orna- ments quite colorful and added depth

to her tree with different shades.

“Our homework was to draw the different palettes we saw and there

was this one I really liked,” Megan said. “It was underwater with

some dolphins with baby dolphins with a Santa hat on.”

Megan went with her mom and spent about an hour and a half looking

at the palettes.

“I really liked it because I got to go to a lot of places Downtown

that I don’t go to every day,” Megan said.

Wong said the third-grade classes have been doing this project for

the past three years.

“This year the city happened to have a children’s palette

competition,” Wong said.

Wong said some of the palettes were submitted to the competition

and student Jacob Tompkins, 8, won for his age group.

“I was so happy when I found out I won because I got off the bus

and my mom said someone called me and I won,” Jacob said. “So I was

pretty much happy for the rest of the day.”

“At City Hall, there was a ceremony and a whole bunch of people

came,” Jacob said. “I had to talk in front of all the people and got

a certificate ... and I met all the City Council people.”

Jacob said his winning design was a wreath of poinsettias.

“Lots of people like flowers and stuff so I wanted to do that.”