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Creating a Colorful World
Students will be able to identify the secondary colors.
- Gather the students together for a read aloud.
- Display the Sesame Street OK Go: Three Primary Colors on YouTube for the class.
Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling(5 minutes)
- Review the ideas from the clip, restating that there are three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. These colors are special because we can’t make them. If we mix two of the primary colors together, we get a new colour, we call these new colors secondary colors.
- Demonstrate colour mixing using a paper plate and small amounts of paint. Show the class what happens when you mix yellow + blue (green), red + blue (purple), and yellow + red (orange).
- Explain that the shade or darkness of your new secondary colour depends on how much of each primary colour you use.
Guided practise(10 minutes)
- Read aloud the book Swatch: The Girl Who Loved colour by Julia Denos
- Ask the students to think about the story and what colors they saw.
- Have the students turn and talk to a partner to finish the sentence, “In the story I noticed____”
- Engage the class in a brief discussion about the main character with the following questions:
- What did you like about the main character?
- What made her interesting or unique?
Independent working time(20 minutes)
- Explain that now students will get to practise mixing their own special colors.
- Show students how they can use their paper plate to create new colors. Remind students to start with small amounts of paint and play around with how much of each colour to mix.
- Pass out paper, paintbrushes, and water to each student.
- Provide pairs or small groups of students with each of the three primary paint colors to share.
- Utilize sentence stems for students to support their participation in pair-share discussion, such as “In the story I noticed____” and “I wonder____?”
- Provide colour words and images on the board for students to referenc*e.
- Have students create a colour wheel to show the different colors that they were able to create.
- Have students identify which of the secondary colors they were able to create when mixing colors.
- Assess whether students are able to name the primary colors needed to create each secondary colour.
Review and closing(5 minutes)
- Review how to mix each of the secondary colors.
- Ask students to share which colors they created and how they created their colors as time allows.