Color Mixing Cirlces

2nd graders were introduced to color mixing. As 1st graders last year, students were introduced to primary and secondary colors. In this lesson, students paint overlapping circles with all different colors. Where the circles overlap, the colors mix. Using a circle template, students traced circles that overlapped each other. (I usually refrain from using any sorts of templates, but making a perfect circle by hand was not an intricate part of this lesson and would be more time consuming.) Students used water colors to paint the entire circle one color and then paint the one beside it another color, painting over the area where the circles overlap. This caused the colors to mix right before their eyes, almost like magic! By now the students understand that primary colors mix into secondary colors but during this lesson, analogous (colors next to each other on the color wheel) and intermediate (colors across from each other on the color wheel) colors were introduced. This lesson is a bridge to the next lesson where they will use these colors for their next project. Analogous and intermediate colors were not studied in depth, just introduced. We get a much more detailed look at those colors in older grades. It was really great to see the students experimenting and speaking to their table-mates about what colors they were using and what colors they were getting when mixing them! Like little scientists! 

Learning Objective: Color theory.

ART WORDS:
Primary Colors: colors that cannot be mixed. (red, yellow, blue)
Secondary Colors: colors that are created when mixing the primary colors. (orange, green, purple)
Analogous Colors: Colors that are next to each other on the color wheel (red-violet, red-orange, blue-green, blue-violet, yellow-green)
Intermediate/Tertiary colors: colors across from each other on the color wheel that when mixed are brown.
Overlapping: when one line cross or goes over another.