Art: Primary Colors

We had an art lesson on primary colors and we also learned a song to help facilitate learning them.


The supplies we used were a set of watercolors(cheap ones work just as well as the expensive ones. Tempera paint would work well here as well. You could also use colored pencils or crayons, but they don't work as well in demonstrations for the very young), a small paper plate, a paper for mixing paints on. You can duplicate the coloring sheet I made very easily by just drawing a circle and drawing lines through to make six segments. I also printed on a poster a copy of the song.  You can have the children hold up or point to circles cut from construction paper of the primary colors as they are said in the song as an extension.

"The Primary Song"(to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star)

Primary, primary what are you?

I am red or yellow or blue.

Primary, what can I do with you?

Mix us into colors that are new.

Primary, primary what are you?

I am red or yellow or blue.

For the painting, I had the kids first fill in the triangles with the primary colors and then showed them how to take two colors and make the color that goes between them. If you don't want to do this with paint, you can use crayons by coloring both colors lightly over each other. I then explained that the new colors were called secondary colors.

Just make sure you display the fine works of art when they are dry. After all, art is made to be admired.