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I love teaching kids about color and the science behind it! It's one of my favorite things to teach, so I was excited when fourth graders started that part of their curriculum recently. They have been learning all about light- white light, how it can be divided into a spectrum of colors, and how objects either reflect or absorb light so that we can see that object's color! It's confusing for kids when they hear that all the colors of light blend to make WHITE, when I've been teaching them since kindergarten that all the colors of paint blend to make BLACK! With the help of this 5-minute clip from a Bill Nye episode, I hope they are beginning to understand. Now that they are learning about the color spectrum in science, it's a good time for us to talk about the color wheel in art. My students are already familiar with the color wheel- I teach them that it's a tool artists use to organize color. I start teaching it in Kindergarten, and tell them it's like a round rainbow. Now that fourth grade has the vocabulary word "spectrum" we can approach it a little more scientifically. If you are unfamiliar with the color wheel, here's a one-minute introductory video. This is more information than I expect my kids to know, but it is a good overview of all the reasons artists need to understand how colors work together! The goal for today's activity was for students to mix colors to make their own complete color wheel, using just the three primary colors of red, blue, and yellow. I explained the color variances using fractions- green is half yellow and half blue, while yellow-green is 3/4 yellow and only 1/4 blue. This was all explained on this worksheet I made. The dots in each circle represent spots of paint- each student was to use a q-tip to dot the correct color and amount of paint, then mix it all up to make the color! I told them it was kind of like following a recipe when cooking. Here's an example of a completed color wheel. The last step was for students to write some "color recipes" using fractions. This ties in very well with their current math focus. They did a great job, and I hope this helped them better understand light, color, AND fractions!
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