From the Art Docent: the Color Wheel

I'm the art docent for a first grade class and my first project was to teach the students about primary and secondary colors. Each student had a paper plate with dabs of blue, yellow, and red poster paint, a paint brush, paper towel, a cup of water, and a line picture of a turkey, since it was nearing Thanksgiving break.

I had labeled the turkey feathers with the color's name, so the students could follow along and make the turkey into a color wheel. We first painted the corresponding feathers with the primary colors, then mixed those to fill in the secondary colors.

Turkey Color Wheel

At the end, I told the kids to stir up all the colors on their plate to make the color brown...how fun, right? It was fun, but the exercise didn't have the desired effect. Most of the kids were coming up with some variation of purple instead of brown for the turkey's body. If I do this assignment again, I'd have the kids bring in even dabs of the primary colors to the center of their palettes. They could mix them in the center and keep adding the color(s) they needed evenly for a nice, solid brown. Once that was accomplished, then they kids could mix their entire palette to make some muddy color of their choice.