~ Teaching the Color Wheel to Children ~

I just got back from teaching the color wheel (with tube watercolors) to a class of 27 fifth graders. That was a pretty large group of students. It was my daughter’s class. And, a couple students were absent today – so it could’ve been an even larger group! I will be leading two more sessions of this Color Wheel lesson to the other two fifth grade classes tomorrow and Friday. There are 3 fifth grade classes at this school, and each class has between 28 – 30 students – fairly large classes.   

It has been a couple years since I have lead a Watercolor Color Wheel lesson, so unfortunately – I was a bit rusty. But, now that I have done it again, I am VERY prepared for tomorrow’s & Friday’s classes! I used to teach art regularly – every week, and I have taught the Color Wheel probably 50 times or more.    

Teaching the color wheel is one of my most favorite art lessons to teach young artists (children). I like it because usually there are several or many students who are unfamiliar with some of the color theory terminology as well as being new or unfamiliar with using tube watercolor paint. So, I always get an amazing sense of achievement knowing that I have introduced new experiences and skills to them. My goal is to teach art to children while giving them a fun experience with art so that they will feel inspired to do MORE art in the future.    

I didn’t get any photos of the students during the lesson today. Maybe I’ll get a chance to tomorrow or Friday.   

In case you are curious about what we did in the class, here’s a brief rundown:   

We learned the following:   

• Primary Colors = Red, Yellow, Blue (Primary colors are the 3 necessary colors needed to mix/create all the other colors. Primary colors cannot be created with any other colors.)  
• Secondary Colors = Orange, Green, Purple (violet) (Secondary colors are created when you mix two Primary colors together.)   
• Tertiary Colors = Red-orange, Yellow-orange, Yellow-green, Blue-green, Blue-violet, and Red-violet. (Tertiary colors are created when a Primary color is mixed with a neighboring Secondary color. Tertiary colors have two color names, with the Primary color always listed first.)  
• Students mixed each of the above colors together and painted them on their Color Wheel Worksheet that was provided to them. 
• Once they had mixed all of their colors, they did a wet-blend still life of a blue vase with flowers.   

We only had about an hour and 10 minutes to complete the lesson, so there are still more topics that we didn’t get to talk about, which should be included while learning about the color wheel and when learning about mixing colors. Those things include: 

• Complimentary Colors 
• Cool vs. Warm Colors 
• Mixing Brown, using all three Primary Colors 
• Mixing grey using complimentary colors 
• Using complimentary colors for darkening   

I am hoping I will be able to have each of these groups of students again in the future to go over these things.   

I have taught the Color Wheel so many times in the past, using either colored pencils or using watercolor. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages.  Consider the following:

• With colored pencils, it’s not as messy, but there is usually a LOT of pencil sharpening involved. 
• Getting violet or purple to actually LOOK like purple can be tricky when using colored pencils. 
• With watercolor, students get a completely different experience with the mixing/blending of the colors than they do when layering colored pencils. With paint it’s more absolute – it’s actually blended color. 
• When you are using paint, and when you are teaching new artists/young artists, it is often their first time ever using tube watercolors, so manipulating the paint, adding enough water, keeping their paints (and brushes) clean – are all added challenges that don’t come up at all when using colored pencils.    

I believe the BEST approach would be to do the color wheels with colored pencil FIRST, and then to repeat the same lesson again later, using watercolor. I think this way the placement of the colors on the color wheel and the make-up of each color is re-enforced, with the students being able to then concentrate more on how to manipulate the watercolor – for the second time.   In this case – with the students I am working with this week, they are only getting it once – with watercolor. So, it’s important to keep this all in mind. Their watercolor color wheels are going to be a little rougher, in general. And, that’s OK.        

In case you are interested in teaching the Color Wheel using Watercolor, here is my short lesson plan, that I used to give to my employees when teaching Summer Art Camps.  These short lesson plans were put into Index Card Booklets that had each lesson plan in them.  Enjoy!