Color Wheel and Color Theory Art Project

Today was our 2nd day of 2nd grade, and Tuesday is art day. Last year we did a lot of fun craft projects, but this year I'm focusing more on art theories and techniques rather than just crafting. We're learning about color theory for the first month, and I wanted to share this week's art lesson.

The first thing I did was print out a simple primary and secondary color wheel from Donna Young.org My plan was to have her color in the circles, but she said she didn't need to do that. I explained the primary color wheel first and put a big P in the center. Then we went over the secondary color wheel, and I put a big S in the center of that one. We talked about which colors, when mixed together, create another completely different color.

The second part was to create color wheel flowers using the art lesson provided over at Deep Space Sparkle. I LOVE this website and am using it almost exclusively for our lessons this year. We followed the directions provided to create our flower bases and petals. During our painting, we reviewed which primary colors created the secondary colors we needed for the petals. Once it dried, she cut and pasted her flowers together and drew some stems. Upon completion, I asked her to name the primary colors that you mix together to create the secondary colors, without looking at the color wheel as a reference. Then we went on the website and looked at the samples that other children have done. I didn't show her beforehand because I didn't want her to try to copy how the other kids did their flowers, since she's a bit of a perfectionist.

She really enjoyed this project, and I like that it covered color wheel and color theory for kids, cutting, pasting, and tracing. Happy homeschooling!