I actually started this painting with kids activity by making color wheels with the children,  giving them an empty tagboard with 8 empty circles.

I realized as they were creating the color wheels that I only wanted them to make primary and secondary colors, so they would only need 6 circles.

So when they finished I just made up  some more  empty color wheels with 6 circles and next time they come I will have them cut up their 8 circle color wheels and paste the circles into the appropriate spots on the 6 circle color wheel. (Easier than having them redo the whole thing)

As we are doing lots of painting and the children love to mix colors, I decided to have them do a color wheel to give them the techniques in a more structured way.

We use the tray painting method. (You can get my free report on kids crafts where it has the complete directions in it.)

I had read in a book by Eileen Prince Art Is Fundamental: Teaching the Elements and Principles of Art in Elementary School a suggestion to use magenta for red and turquoise for blue when using the 3 primary colors.

I did have the children use those 3, magenta, yellow and turquoise.

However, the kids were asking for regular blue and regular red(the magenta does look pink) so I gave them both. I didn’t see a great difference in the magenta and red, but when using blue instead of turquoise, the purple came out  much different shade.

In my color wheel on top you can see where I put on top of the orange and the violet, the colors I mixed using regular blue and red. Do not have your kids add those, it is only for show purposes.

So you can really use whichever colors paint you find easier to get.

What you do is have the children first put the 3 primaries in place. Make sure they do them in the right place.

Then let them them mix the colors on the aluminum foil as I explain in my report, and have them put the secondary colors in between the two colors they mixed.

To have them really remember which were primaries and which were secondaries Ithen gave them an empty sheet like below.

and had them paint ONLY primary colors on the first sheet

and then ONLY secondary colors on the second sheet.

Its always much more of an educational experience when the children actually DO the activities instead of just learning about them.

Now they really know which colors are primary, which are secondary and they will have a color wheel to refer to.

I will be having the children do further activities with primaries and secondaries and include the concepts of complementary, intermediary and tertiary colors.

Stay tuned and in the meantime watch the short video about this activity below.