The Color Wheel

After reading Susanne's post over at Beautiful Sun Montessori and filling out all of my conference reports, I was inspired to do some color work. My conference reports include a place to indicate whether a child is working independently with materials that teach awareness of color, and whether they have mastered them for their age and/or level. I really got to wondering what, beyond color boxes 1, 2, and, 3, really helped the children to understand color.

I toyed with some paints and worked a bit with the color boxes and a color mixing work I had available and came up with some extension ideas.

I sat down with one of my second year students today and thought I would give her a simple terminology lesson. She already knows how to mix the primary colors together to produce the secondary colors. So, I thought I would simply teach her the names for these types of colors, and show her how to build them into the shape of the center of a color wheel. This, I thought, would lay the groundwork for a later lesson on how to produce tertiary colors.

So, we sat down at a rug where she had already matched the Colors in Color Box 1. I said, "The Colors in Color Box 1 are..." and before I could continue, she interjected, "Primary Colors!" Well, so much for my imparting of knowledge, huh?

Anyway, we built them into something like a triangle, then added in the secondary colors. Then, we got out the color mixing work and started exploring the concept of tertiary colors. After mixing a primary and a secondary color together, she chose the tablet from Color Box 3 that she thought most closely resembled the color she had produced. The result was the wheel you see below.

I think I will make a paper extension tomorrow if there's time, where children can paint the color wheel with colors they've mixed themselves.






In other news, some traveling musician friends of mine stopped in and played a couple of songs for the group. We recently began a formal music class, so there has been so much interest in music - a perfect opportunity to invite some visitors! Thanks, Leftmore!