Color and Color Mixing!

Color theory is something I could spend weeks teaching and talking about, and as my favorite element of art the projects we could do are endless!

To start, we discussed the science behind  all the colors in the rainbow. We saw how pure light contains all of the colors and that when light passes through something reflective (like water) the light waves split at different frequencies which our eyes perceive as various colors.

Our K-1 class read a story entitled "Roy G Biv is Mad at Me Because I Love Pink."
It's a cute story that goes through every color in the rainbow describing its effects in art.

Then, our students created Roy G Biv portraits. It's funny how much the boys in the class took the "mad" factor from the book to heart!

This one is so fancy :) haha

I've noticed adding teeth is very important to this age group...

Then, we focused on primary colors: red, yellow and blue. With these three colors we can mix any color in the rainbow spectrum!

We read a book called "Mouse Paint" and learned all about the color combinations used to make secondary colors.

Together we used watercolors  to mix primary colors just like the mice in the book! 

In the 2nd and 3rd grade classes, clay was our medium of choice. We used Fimo clay, a clay that hardens when baked in the oven. With pre-portioned clay we mixed our primary colors to create a full rainbow.

I really dated myself with the 4th and 5th grade classes when I pulled out a troll doll and no one knew what it was! I told our students how when I was little I loved playing with the troll dolls with rainbow hair. Naturally, there needed the a lesson around that. This was one of my favorite lessons from my student teaching days!

Using only the colors red, yellow and blue, our talented students made their own rainbow trolls.

After all that, I'd say our color lessons proved to be a huge success, and our students are color mixing champions!