Exploring Primary Colors with Tempera Paint

Description

Using just two or three paint colors and various sponges or brushes can teach your child about primary and secondary colors. It helps build fine motor skills as well. Also, for young toddlers, it will reinforce color recognition. Excellent beginning paint activity for all children and may help with color identification for visual learners. My children did this activity at an art class at 2 years of age.
paint-orange-yellow

Materials

  • Tempera Washable Paint 2 Primary Colors (See chart below to see what two colors you would like to mix.)
  • 2-3 Brushes
  • White Paper (construction, scrapbook, card stock or water color paper)
  • Paint containers(small cups or plastic palette which you can find for about a $1 at craft stores)
  • Water container for rinsing brush.

Steps

  • Select colors to be used.
  • Place each color in a palette.
  • Have your child explore with the colors. Encourage using one color and then adding the second.

Tips

  • Having a brush for each color makes it easier to monitor.
  • Use a dish that has some weight to hold the water for young children to keep from tipping

Other Examples

Red + Blue = Purple

Make a painting for each combo of primary colors. Display the pictures up on a bulletin board or wall and print out color names in the respective color and tape or pin them next to the picture. (Blue print in blue letters, red in red letters, etc.)
paint-red-blue

Mixing Colors with White

Another important art concept is learning what happens when you mix white with colors. You could use one color as the example below with blue and white.
paint-blue-white

Mixing Colors with White

Here the children mixed colors of their choice with white to see how it changes the result.
paint-purple-pink-white

Use Painted Pictures as a Background

You could also use these painted pieces as background. As focus became more on academics, I tried to find creative ways that would integrate art and reading. You could read a book to the children, in this case about a fish, and have children cut out a fish or even pre-cut for very young children and glue it on the painted paper. This could also be a birthday party activity. This one was done at an birthday party hosted at an Art Center but it is one that can be done easily at a home hosted party. Perfect for all ages too. Pre-cut fish were ready to be glued on with a glue stick after the child painted the "ocean". Then fine silver glitter was sprinkled while the paint was wet to give a shimmery effect. Approximately 15 minutes drying time
paint-fish

Educational Tip

  • Painting is a great way to help develop fine motor skills as well as a great visual way to reinforce color recognition.
  • Make predictions about what will happen when you mix the two colors. You could do it as a class activity and tally votes. Then come back after and see how many predictions were accurate.
  • Labeling the colors as suggested in the Other Ideas section are a great way to visually reinforce color words. You could make it like a visual math problem and add a page with red, a page with yellow and the third a page with the result of mixing the two colors. Red + Yellow = Orange. With several of these you could make a visual class chart for preschool or kindergarteners.