3rd grade learns about tertiary colors - colors mixed from primary and secondary colors. It can be hard to give an effective lesson on color because there are so many, and students can get confused in this process...SO I always put up a hand-painted color wheel, and a blank one. We mix the colors together one by one and they fill out a "color strip" on the top of their paintings (not pictured). This helps them differentiate between the 3 groups of colors and to remember to use ONLY tertiary in their paintings.
Tertiary colors can be tough because each is a color that is neither one color, nor another. For example, yellow-green is not recognizable as yellow nor green, and the same for red-orange, etc. So for them to be able to decide when to stop mixing/adding color as they have achieved the tertiary hue is a big high five for my students.
The first week of class, we did the color swatch strip, and then painted black contour lines of vases and flowers from a poster which I provided with simple flower shapes. Important not to make the flowers too detailed, as they are reminded it will be hard to paint inside the black lines with the brushes I am provided.
All in all I think my students learned quite a lot out of this lesson!
