Primary colors activities for preschool

32 Color Activities for Preschool That Will Stimulate Their Minds

Getting to know colors is a fundamental part of early childhood education. Mixing colors, learning their names, and experimenting with color attributes should be part of an everyday routine in the preschool classroom. Even color patterning has a tremendous impact on a child's cognitive development. Have a look at these clever color recognition activities to help kids learn about colors and have fun at the same time.

This fast-paced classic game will help kids think on their feet while having fun. Let them call out names to help them learn color names along the way.

Learn more: The Many Little Joys

This game is perfect to help little hands with fine motor skills as they try and dig for different colored scarves in the ball.

Learn more: Still Playing School

3. Feed the Shark

Kids get to learn color sorting in this fun ocean-themed game. Paste colorful printable sharks to toilet paper rolls and let kids drop the fish in their mouths.

Learn more: Mommy Made That

Preschoolers can practice color sorting while pretending to deliver mail to their friends. These envelopes and stamps are reusable and help kids learn to recognize color names.

Learn more: Look We're Learning

Celery sticks make the perfect stamp for fish scales thanks to their half-moon shape. Use celery to print rainbow-colored scales on a fish outline for a cute color craft.

Learn more: Crafty Morning

6. Color Sorting Train

This game can help kids with recognizing colors but also with counting. Sing a fun train song while sorting colors into the different carriages.

Learn more: Fun Learning for Kids

Mix clothes pegs with color names written on them and let kids rearrange the pegs in the right order. This is a quick color learning activity that can be replayed a few times.

Learn more: Fantastic Fun and Learning

Using primary colors, students can paint a rainbow onto their hands and print it onto a piece of paper. This is a fun and messy way to teach them some basic color theory and make some cool crafts in the process.

Learn more: Heather Bellgardt

Kids will love this DIY color game. All you need is some acrylic paint and a bunch of rocks and you are ready to go!

Learn more: The House that Lars Built

Add some velcro dots to colorful bunny cutouts and pom-poms. Preschoolers can match the tail and the bunny in this cute pom-pom color sorting game.

Learn more: From ABCs to ACTs

Once kids have nailed basic color recognition, let them explore the different hues of colors by using paint sample cards. They can learn color attributes like light and dark in this color sorting activity.

Learn more: The Rigneys

Kids love fine motor games like pom drop. They use tongs and scoops to put the colorful pom-poms in different containers like tubes, ice cube trays, and muffin tins.

Learn more: Princesses, Pies, and Preschool Pizzazz

Use a die to tell kids in which color they should write a word. They can create a beautiful rainbow sentence or poem.

Learn more: Teachers Pay Teachers

Use plastic color ice cubes and an empty tray to create a grid pattern. This is great for color recognition skills and concentration.

Learn more: Creciendo Con Libros Y Juegos

A favorite color activity amongst young learners is matching stickers to color boxes. This can be turned into a fun game or a reward system as kids sort stickers by color.

Learn more: Little Family Fun

To teach kids more advanced color theory concepts, create a magic rainbow ring. These kinds of color science experiments will captivate their young minds.

Learn more: Andrea Knight

Give each student their own flipbook showing the colors along with their names. Students can even color the images themselves or add stickers and pictures on the pages.

Learn more: Crystal and Comp

Dip cotton balls into a flour and water mixture that has been colored with food dye. Bake the balls to create a hard outer coating. Kids will have so much fun smashing the baked rainbow once it has cooled down.

Learn more: Learn Play Imagine

This cheery color activity idea sees kids sorting colors onto butterflies they cut out and color themselves. Mix an assortment of items into a bowl and let kids sort the objects by color by placing them on the corresponding colored butterfly.

Learn more: No Time for Flash Cards

Color bingo is great for color identification skills and helps kids to read the names of colors while playing. Use colored buttons to place on the bingo mats for some added fun.

Learn more: Fun With Mama

Nothing beats a good old-fashioned sing and dance party! Put on the best preschool color songs and have kids sing and dance before or after a color lesson.

Learn more: Jack Hartmann Kids Music Channel

Turn snack time into an opportunity for teaching colors with fun colored Goldfish crackers. Kids can sort them into colors and build shapes or spell out the names of the colors with the crackers.

Learn more: Making Mine

This is one of the best color matching activities for busy preschoolers. Use straws in this pom-pom color sorting game that can be a race against the clock.

Learn more: Kindergarten Connection

Use an ice cream scoop and plastic balls to create color patterns on the printable ice cream mat. This is a fun, easy, low-cost color activity perfect for the summer.

Learn more: Planning Playtime

This hands-on color sorting activity can be fun for the whole class. Let students race in teams to see who can place toys onto the correct color sorting mats the fastest.

Learn more: Twins and Coffee

Combine a color sort activity with some basic math skills. Students roll 2 dice to see how many of each color fruit loop gets added to the rainbow. The best part is eating the cereal after the rainbow is complete!

Learn more: Housing a Forest

This game is great for quiet time, allowing students to fish for different colors on their own. They should identify the colors as they go, or catch the fish of the color your prompt.

Learn more: Tatertots and Jello

This is a fun and easy color mixing activity to show kids how primary colors work together to create secondary colors like green, orange, and purple.

Learn more: Learning 4 Kids

Experiments with color are tons of fun like this activity using only corn syrup, water, and a water bottle. Add the colored liquids to the bottle and see the magic happen as they combine to make a new color and go back to normal.

Learn more: Preschool Inspirations

This is a simple color learning activity where kids can enjoy dough color sorting and mixing dough to create new colors.

Learn more: Mommy Evolution

Color learning activities can get messy! Use water balloons to mix some colors together and throw them on paper or canvas to make a messy artwork.

Learn more: Pre-K Pages

Let students create spinning tops with primary colors painted on them. As they spin them, students can observe how a yellow and blue top makes the color green when spun! Simply magical.

Learn more: Creative Family Fun

Color Activities for Preschool and Pre-K

Here are 10 fun, hands-on activities for exploring colors in Pre-K. Pre-K children don’t need a coloring worksheet to learn colors. They can learn through exploration!

Color Flags

I made these flags from sheets of felt, cut in half, and hot-glued them to dowel rods. We use them with color songs, such as “Colors All Around” and “A Rainbow of Colors”.

Gummy Bear Song (by Dr. Jean)

A fun song for teaching colors: read the post at this link and get the printable: Gummy Bear Song

I See Colors Book

Make a layered book by folding it where each page is a little longer than the one before. Each page has a different color with the words “I see red” or “I see yellow”. Children draw pictures (with matching color crayon) on each page, or cut out pictures from magazines to glue in the book.

You can also print out this Colorful World book for children to draw pictures in or glue magazine pictures.

Download: Colorful World Book

Graph

Make a graph of children’s favorite colors. Each child chooses one Unifix cube of their favorite color. Stack each color to make an object graph.

Color Mixing with Water

Children experiment with mixing colored water. Use the primary colors (red, blue, yellow) to make new colors. Red, blue and yellow food color is added to water in a clear cup. Children use eyedroppers to get the colored water they want and mix the colors in a paint tray. We use plastic paint trays with 6 mini bowls. Children can dump their water into a bucket once they have filled the 6 bowls and start again. They can put drops of the colors they make on a paper towel, so that it can be saved.

Color Mixing with Paint

The children are given a mixing tray, paintbrushes, and cups of paint with red, yellow, blue, white, and black. The clear mixing trays in the photo were leftover packaging from Easter eggs, but anything can be used. The red, yellow, and blue paint are the primary colors used for mixing secondary colors (green, purple, orange). The white is for making tints and the black is for making shades of color. The children freely experiment, mixing any colors they chose.

Colored Snack Spread

Children mix food coloring in white icing or soft cream cheese, spread the icing on graham crackers or a bagel half, and add a topping (sprinkles or semi sweet chocolate chips).

Color Collages

Have children search through magazines for red pictures, and glue them onto red construction paper. Do the same with each color and use these as posters for the classroom.
Another Idea: Cut fabric of different patterns and colors into 1-inch squares, and give children different colors of construction paper cut in half. Make sure to have several patterns of each color fabric (ginghams, stripes, florals, plaids, polka dots). Children glue the pieces of fabric onto the matching color of construction paper (blue fabric on blue paper, yellow fabric on yellow paper, etc.) These can be made into a book or quilt.

Color Dice Printable

I made these cards that will fit into the Carson Dellosa Roll & Learn Pocket Cubes (Item #CD-140002). You can also use this printable to make your own dice by recycling a small Priority Mail box or other small cardboard box. Cover the box with wrapping paper or bulletin board paper. Print out the dice printables, cut them out, and glue them onto the sides of the box.

To play: Children take turns rolling the die. When the die stops rolling, the child will look at the color on top, and find something in the room that is the same color.

Download: Color Dice Cards

Color Sorting Cups

Label clear punch cups with color names. Children sort a collection of small objects into the cups by color. Examples: crayons, small blocks, silk flowers, counting bears, ribbons, cloth pieces, colored rocks, leaves.

Color Bottles

Make color discovery bottles by putting colored water in a plastic sealed test tube or a drink bottle. Soap or oil can be added to the bottle for “special effects”. Color bottles also make an interesting decoration if placed on a windowsill or shelf.

Color Search

Tell the children a color they are to find, and have them search around the classroom for one thing of that color. Everyone comes back to the circle, and the children share what they found.

Books

A list of color books for Pre-K children: Books

Songs

• Colors All Around, by Jack Hartmann: MP3 Download
• Gummy Bear Song, by Dr. Jean: MP3 Download and Activity
• Songs for Teaching Colors: MP3 Downloads
• Rainbow Colors: Mrs. Jones Room
• The Color Song: Mrs. Jones Room
• A Rainbow of Colors ~ We All Live Together Vol. 5, by Greg & Steve

More Resources

These packets for teaching Colors are available in my shop.

Summary of classes for children 5-7 years old. Development of visual gnosis Color

Introduction to the color wheel

The color wheel is the main tool for combining colors. The first circular color scheme was developed by Isaac Newton in 1666.
The color wheel is designed so that combinations of any colors chosen from it will look good together. Many variations on the basic design have been made over the years, but the most common version is the 12-color circle.

Primary colors

The color wheel is based on three colors, red, yellow and blue. They are called primary colors. It is these first three colors that will create the rest of the colors on the wheel when mixed. Below is an example of a simple color wheel using only primary colors.

Secondary colors

Secondary colors are colors that are created by mixing two primary colors. Mixing yellow and blue creates green, yellow and red creates orange, blue and red creates purple. Below is an example of a color wheel, with secondary colors added on the outer ring.

Third colors

Third colors are created by mixing a primary and a secondary color or two secondary colors together. Below is an example of a color wheel with tertiary colors on the outer ring.

The color wheel is not limited to twelve colors, because behind each of these colors there is a string of different shades. They can be obtained by adding white, black or gray. In this case, the colors will change in the direction of saturation, brightness and lightness. The number of possible combinations is almost limitless.

The color wheel or the art of color mixing

Are you familiar with the color wheel ? This tool is widely used by creative professionals: designers, architects, florists, etc. But, if you look, this is a very convenient and affordable mechanism for mixing colors, selecting color combinations in clothes, interiors . .. And by explaining to a child how to use the color wheel, you can diversify and make joint creative activity more interesting.

Currently, there are several variants of color wheels, but the most common is the eight-sector, which includes four primary colors (red, yellow, green, blue) and four "intermediate" (orange, cyan, purple and magenta ):

However, in my opinion, the most convenient for working with children is Newton's 6-sector or 12-sector circle:

With only three types of paint in your arsenal - yellow, blue and red , you can create your own color wheel with your child. The essence of the circle is that when mixing two adjacent primary colors, we get the corresponding secondary (well, for example, by mixing the primary colors "yellow" and "red" we get the secondary "orange"). If you want to create a 12-sector circle, then the same work needs to be done to get the tertiary colors (yellow-green, yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet (magenta), violet-cyan, and greenish-blue).

On the circle it is convenient to show the child which colors are warm and which are cold (blue-violet-green colors are cold colors, red-orange-yellow is warm).

The very creation of such a circle is truly an exciting experience. Moreover, the color wheel can be made both with paints, for example, with plasticine, modeling dough, threads, cereals, etc. etc.

You can choose either paper or a slice of lemon as the basis for the circle, for example:

The natural color wheel made from the leaves of trees of the corresponding colors looks insanely beautiful:

And by creating a color wheel on cardboard, you can turn it into an educational toy:

Color Combinations

Color Harmony - Basic Techniques for Creating Color Schemes

Red, blue and yellow are the primary colors. When red and yellow are mixed, orange is produced; mix blue and yellow, you get green; When you mix red and blue, you get purple. Orange, green and purple are secondary colors. Tertiary colors like red-violet and blue-violet are made by mixing primary colors with a secondary color.

According to color theory, harmonious color combinations are obtained from any two colors located opposite each other on the color wheel, any three colors evenly distributed on the color wheel, forming a triangle, or any four colors, forming a rectangle. Harmonious color combinations are called color schemes. Color schemes remain harmonious regardless of the angle of rotation.

Basic color schemes

Complementary or complementary colors

Complementary or complementary colors are any two colors opposite each other on the color wheel. For example, blue and orange, red and green. These colors create high contrast, so they are used when you want something to stand out. Ideally, use one color as a background and another as an accent. You can alternately use shades here; a slight bluish tint, for example, contrasts with dark orange.

Classic triad

A classic triad is a combination of three colors that are equally spaced apart on the color wheel. For example, red, yellow and blue. The triad scheme also has high contrast, but is more balanced than complementary colors. The principle here is that one color dominates and accentuates with the other two. Such a composition looks alive even when using pale and desaturated colors.

Analog Triad

Analog Triad: A combination of 2 to 5 (ideally 2 to 3) colors next to each other on the color wheel. An example is combinations of muted colors: yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green, green, blue-green.

Contrast Triad (Split Complementary Colors)

Using Split Complementary Colors gives a high degree of contrast, but not as saturated as a complementary color. Split complementary colors give more harmony than using a direct complementary color.

Tetrad - four color combination

This scheme includes one primary and two secondary colors, plus a secondary color that emphasizes accents. Example: blue-green, blue-violet, orange-red, orange-yellow.

This is the most complex circuit. It offers more color variety than any other scheme, but if all four colors are used in equal amounts, then the scheme can look unbalanced, so you need to choose one color as dominant. The use of pure color in equal amounts should be avoided.

The Basics of Color Theory

Nowadays, we have an extensive palette of colors to create. It includes millions of shades. Digital gave us all this: computers, graphic tablets, cameras, etc. People of the past centuries could only dream of such opportunities.

But a problem arose - how to figure it out among all this diversity. How to use colors correctly and mix them with each other? What rules to follow? Let's figure it out.

What is color?

Color is waves of a certain kind of electromagnetic energy, which, after being perceived by the human eye and brain, are converted into color sensations.

The colors of bodies perceived by us represent a subjective characteristic of light, since these colors essentially depend on the properties of the eye. The objective characteristic is the frequency spectrum corresponding to the complex reflected light. From the school physics course, we know about optics. This section studies the nature of light, its properties, the laws associated with its propagation. Thanks to the discovery of optics, we know that with the help of a prism it is possible to split a white beam of light into a whole spectrum of colors.

Hence follows: Color is a property of light.

And another important conclusion: When interacting with an object, part of the spectrum will be absorbed

Spectrum and color wheel

Visible light occupies an extremely small space among all electromagnetic waves.

But its spectrum contains a huge number of colors.

Key colors of the spectrum:

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• Green
• Blue
• Blue
• Violet

It is these colors that are included in the palette of the so-called “color wheel”. It consists of red, green and blue (RGB).

Simplified version:

There are a lot of color wheel options, so you can choose the one that suits you best.

But the color wheel can also include other primary colors. As for example in the CMYK model (primary colors are purple, yellow, cyan).

The difference between the RGB and CMYK models is also in the type of mixing: in RGB, mixing all colors gives white (it is in the middle), and in the CMYK model, the final color of mixing is black. CMYK is most convenient when working with real paints, not digital.

Duodecimal Color Wheel / Johannes Itten Color Wheel

Duodecimal Color Wheel - classic. It helps to select harmonious color combinations of two, three, four or more colors. The circle is divided into 12 parts:

Primary colors are yellow, blue and red. Complementary colors are orange, green and purple. Between the primary and secondary shades there are transitional colors (named after the primary and secondary colors).

In the circle there is a division into cold / warm shades:

Warm - closer to such colors as orange and yellow. Cold - closer to blue.

Key color parameters: Hue/Saturation/Lightness

• A hue is a variation of a color from the color wheel.
• Saturation is the intensity of a certain tone. From complete absence to maximum intensity.
• Brightness/Lightness is a gradient from the brightest point to the darkest.

The question arises: why did we analyze this “color wheel” for so long and why do we need it?

It is he who is the very tool with which we will further determine color harmonies.

We will talk about them now.

Color harmonies Monochrome

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Similar colors

The colors that are next to each other on the color wheel are used: two or three colors.

Some examples:

Complementary/opposite colors

The most common harmony, based on the contrast of two distant or extremely distant colors. On the color wheel, they are located opposite each other.

Complementary colors are often used in cinema:

In painting:

Four harmonious colors

These are dual complementary colors - opposite shades are used.

Red-green, yellow-blue.

Separate complementary colors
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In this harmony, a color on one side of the circle is opposed by two on the opposite side.

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Harmonic triads

In this harmony there is a division into three primary colors.

Gamma Masking

Gamma Masking is an easy way to avoid unnecessary colors. To do this, you need to select the main / dominant color and additional colors on the color wheel (for example, using any of the color harmonies). Then connect these colors (you can highlight them with dots). All those shades that are inside the resulting figure are suitable for you, and it is better not to use the rest.

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The color wheel is also available in Photoshop. But by default it is hidden. How to turn it on? Go to the section Edit - Preferences - General. In the “HUD Color Picker” tab, select the Hue Wheel. Now, to call the color wheel, select the brush tool (brush tool) and hold down the key combination: Shift + Alt + Right click (right mouse button).

Speaking of color harmonies, one cannot fail to mention the tonal contrast.

Tone/Tonal Contrast

Represents the difference from lightest to darkest. Tonal contrast is characteristic of achromatic colors. Achromatic colors are shades of gray ranging from white to black. The brightest (lightest) color is white, and the darkest is black. It is contrast that is most important to the human eye. You can express much more with it than with color.

And the last thing I want to talk about in this article is color composition. What it is and what it is used for - we will understand further.

Color composition

Color composition is based on the proportion of one color. Helps to distinguish between the main and the secondary.

Very often the proportional distribution of shades in the frame is used in cartoons, movies, photography.

For example, in the first photo, the background is in shades of brown, and the characters are in blue and white. But blue and white stand out, although there is more brown in the frame. This is done so that the viewer pays attention to the characters, and the background is not so important.

This technique can be found in many places, here are a few more examples:

Use color proportions to highlight the main objects. This will help focus people's attention on what is most important.

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Color science: acquaintance with primary colors

APPENDIX 2

Outline

Classes on Fine Arts

For children 4-6 years old

type : Painting 9000 activities : Reveal the richness and variety of colors in painting, introduce children in detail to the three primary colors that exist in nature

Lesson 9 objectives0314 :