Our Version of Kandinsky's Cirlces

A Study of 

Primary and Secondary Colors

After exploring color mixing, students at Mill Brook School then learned about two important ways to group colors: Primary and Secondary colors. During our color mixing, students found that there are three colors you can't mix yellow, red, and blue. These colors are called primary colors and when they are mixed together they create purple, green and orange which are know as secondary colors.

To help second graders better understand this concept, we looked a Wassily Kandinsky's concentric circle painting. Students observed the colors he used in his painting. 

                     

(Images above from left to right: Squares with Concentric Rings and Portrait of Wassily Kandinsky)

Then students created their own inspired painting from his work. First, we folded the paper into eight sections. Then we started making oil pastel circles using only secondary colors.

Then we filled in our white spaces in each section using only primary colors with tempera cakes. 

Here are our beautifully finished rainbow colored circles!

                              

Beginning a Study of Color

                                                                                                        Thinking about Color with Wheels  and Caterpillars!

Students at Mill Brook School are currently beginning their study of color. First and Second students explored color mixing through a couple different activities. Second grade students learned all about color wheels and then they created their own using water color pencils. By using water color pencils students were able to mix their own secondary colors of orange, green and purple.

                   

After students carefully colored in their wheels, they activated the paint in the pencils by adding water with a brush. They carefully added water to each individual section to create these beautiful color wheels you see below. Students were so excited to see that these could make all the colors just using red, yellow and blue.          

 

                                    

                                       

                                          


                                         

First grades also explored the six rainbow colors and color mixing. To help introduce students to this new idea, we first thought of the six colors of the rainbow, that we were going to focus on: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. We then ask ourselves from what we already know about color mixing how can we mix colors? As a class we went through each color and learned that there are three colors you can't make using color mixing: red, yellow and blue. We also learned that there are three colors you can make orange, purple, and green. Then using water color pencils (similar the to the second graders), first grade students practice mixing orange, green and purple to create these amazing rainbow caterpillars below!!

Here you can see some students choose to practice mixing below 

their caterpillar, to make sure they mixed the right color.