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Color Theory for Kids: Key Concepts to Know

Not many people realize it, but learning color theory for kids can really enhance their eye for design. Color theory is a skill that can be carried for the rest of one’s design career.

In this article, color theory is explained, and we explore why it is a valuable skill to learn. We will also look at different digital design classes, resources, and projects kids can do all on their own with no money spent!

This is perfect for a new hobby to learn at home, or for someone who wants to expand their knowledge in all things design and art related. Keep reading if the subject of color theory sounds like it might be a great fit for you. Or jump right into a fun online Thanksgiving drawing class and a free make a digital holiday card event.

Explore color theory for kids

As you continue to read on, you will learn about several different factors that play a part in the theory of color. Color is important in our world, because colors are more than just pretty things to look at in art.

Color allows us to feel certain emotions - sometimes without us even noticing! Warm colors can make us feel happy and excited while cold colors can make us feel sad or reserved.

Colors also tell us stories without any words even being said. Among many different factors, we will touch base on the color wheel, primary and tertiary colors, and why all of this is important in design, art, computer science, and just life in general!

Learn the color wheel

Have you ever seen a color wheel before? Even if you answered no, most likely you have! Ever since we were super young, the color wheel has been taught to us in school, art classes, and informative television shows and books. It might just look like a rainbow in a circle, but this wheel holds so much knowledge that can benefit any and every creative!

A color wheel makes it easy for us to identify which colors are primary, secondary, and tertiary. By knowing this information, it is simple to find the perfect color combinations for whatever project we are working on. From designing a dress to figuring out what colors look good for a painting you have yet to make, having a color wheel easily accessible lets us know which colors can be the best fit.

Primary colors


Primary colors are essential in knowing the theory of color. What are primary colors exactly? There are three specific colors that we can mix together to make a huge range of many different colors. Those three colors are red, yellow, and blue. Without these three colors, every other color we know would not exist either. Don’t believe me? Try getting your red, blue, and yellow colored pencils and coloring over each other. Or try getting your paint and mixing them together. Do you notice the changes that occur as a result of combining these primary colors together?

Secondary colors


Secondary colors are the colors we have as a result of mixing two primary colors together. For example, when we combine blue with yellow, we get the color green. Green is a secondary color! Think of these colors like the baby colors and red, blue, and yellow are our parent colors. How many secondary colors do you think you can create?

If you said three, you are correct! Green, orange, and purple are the three secondary colors we can find on the color wheel. They might not be primary colors, but they are just as important to our society. Composting bins, street cones, and Yahoo! are created by secondary colors. Imagine if our world didn’t have secondary colors!

Tertiary colors


We learned about our primary and secondary colors, so it is only right that we talk about tertiary colors as well! It is a bit difficult to pronounce, but tertiary colors are not hard to learn about at all. Tertiary colors are what we get when we combine a primary color with a secondary color. In total, there are six tertiary colors: red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet.

Having tertiary colors is great, because different shades and tones of colors can express a completely different emotion and message. Compare the color green to the mixture color of yellow-green. Dark green can symbolize prestige and royalty while yellow-green showcases a more serene and playful feeling. Tertiary colors are just as important to our world as both primary and secondary!

Color theory printables and resources

Now that you know a little bit more about the colors, here are a few resources that can print out at home!

  • Primary, secondary, and tertiary color wheels: Check out this page to have the different color wheels already filled out and easily accessible for any project!
  • Color wheel and color blending worksheets: These empty worksheets are great practice to see how certain colors make an even wider range of colors!
  • Detailed explanations about the vocabulary terms we just discussed, plus more terms such as analogous, triadic, and tetradic colors: This website also offers a virtual color wheel in which you can pick a color and the site provides a color combination for you.

Color theory project ideas

1.

Color Mixing Experiment:

If you have cups you can fill with water, paper towels, and food coloring in our primary colors: red, blue, and yellow, then congrats! You can do this fun color theory experiment from the comfort of your own home!

In each cup of water, add 30 drops of food coloring. Each cup should have its own color. One cup of yellow water, one cup of blue water, and one of red. Then, get three pieces of paper towel. For each cup, place a paper towel that is folded in half vertically. Half of the paper towel should be submerged in the dyed water, and the other half should be sticking out of the cup. The end that is not in water, place it in another cup’s dye.

Place the first end of one paper towel in the blue cup. And the second end in the yellow cup. Put the first end of the next paper towel in the yellow cup and the second end in the red cup. Finally, place the first end of the last paper towel in the red cup and the second end in the blue cup.

You will start to see the colors travel through the paper towels as it absorbs the water. Since we used primary colors and they are getting blended together, the paper towels will start to show secondary colors right before your eyes!

2.  Colorful Stamps

Do you have a dream vacation? Or maybe you already travelled and want to visit again soon? With a pencil and paper, sketch a stamp for your destination. For example, if you loved a trip to Disneyland, draw a stamp of the decorations all around the theme park! Draw this stamp three times on the same sheet of paper. Make sure there is space in between each!

After drawing your stamp three times, try challenging yourself. With either paint or crayons/colored pencils, color each stamp using a different color palette. In our Disneyland example, you could color the first stamp as if it is in the morning, color the second stamp as the sun is setting, and for the last stamp you can color the sky as if it is night time and the fireworks have been set. Try having fun and being creative for these three different color palettes!

3.

 Characters of The Rainbow

What is your favorite show? Favorite video game? Whether you love cars, pokemon, or crystals, try seeing if you can match them with a specific color! By printing out an empty color wheel or by drawing your own with pencil and paper, you can draw each figure within the color wheel with their matching color.

For example, for your yellow section in my color wheel, you can draw Pikachu. For blue, you can draw Gyarados. Keep going until every section of your color wheel has a character. Then, color it all in! You can use colored pencils, crayons, or markers. After both the characters and the color wheel is colored in completely, you now have an amazing poster you can hang up on your wall!

Get started with color theory for kids

As you can see, color is very important in not only the world of art and design, but it adds meaning to even the most mundane aspects of life. Without color, life would not make as much sense as it does now. From fashion and media, to websites and logos, to even street lights and signage, color is all around us! When kids learn the theory of color early, their creativity will be endless and they will continue to grow as an artist and designer.

If reading this post made you fall in love with color even more, or if you want a more interactive approach to learning about color theory, Create & Learn offers a power of color class packed with so many fun activities and exercises. Get started with fun digital design classes for kids or read more about the best online art classes.

Written by Marielle Cruz Cabillo, a Create & Learn instructor who has a BS in Visual Communication Design with a Minor in Marketing, and has taught children for 6 years.

Primary color Facts for Kids

The cyan, magenta, yellow and black (key) pigments (CMYK) found in an inkjet printer that can be used for color photographic reproduction.

Primary colors (or primary colours) are sets of colors that can be combined to make a useful range of colors. The primary colors are those which cannot be created by mixing other colors in a given color space.

For subtractive combination of colors, as in mixing of pigments or dyes for printing, the primaries normally used are cyan, magenta, and yellow, though the set of red, yellow, blue is popular among artists.

For additive combination of colors, as in overlapping projected lights or in CRT displays, the primary colors normally used are red, green, and blue.

Contents

  • Biological basis
  • Additive primaries
  • Subtractive primaries
  • Images for kids

Biological basis

Primary colors are not a fundamental property of light but are related to the physiological response of the eye to light (the way the eye works). For humans, three primary colors are usually used, since human color vision is trichromatic.

Fundamentally, light is a continuous spectrum of the wavelengths that can be detected by the human eye, an infinite-dimensional stimulus space. However, the human eye normally contains only three types of color receptors, called cone cells. Each color receptor respond to different ranges of the color spectrum. Humans and other species with three such types of color receptors are known as trichromats.

Additive primaries

Additive color mixing

Media that combine emitted lights to create the sensation of a range of colors are using the additive color system. Television is the most common use of this.

The additive primaries are red, green, and blue. Because of the response curves of the three different color receptors in the human eye, these colors are optimal in the sense that the largest range of colors — a gamut — visible by humans can be generated by mixing light of these colors. Additive mixing of red and green light, produce shades of yellow or orange. Mixing green and blue produces shades of cyan, and mixing red and blue produces shades of purple and magenta. Mixing equal proportions of the additive primaries results in shades of grey; when all three colors are fully saturated, the result is white. The color space that is generated is called the RGB ("red, green, blue") color space.

Subtractive primaries

Subtractive color mixing

Media that use reflected light and colorants to produce colors are using the subtractive color method of color mixing. In the printing industry, to produce the varying colors, apply the subtractive primaries yellow, cyan, and magenta together in varying amounts. Subtractive color works best when the surface or paper, is white, or close to it.

Mixing yellow and cyan produces shades of green; mixing yellow with magenta produces shades of red, and mixing magenta with cyan produces shades of blue. In theory, mixing equal amounts of all three pigments should produce shades of grey, resulting in black when all three are fully saturated, but in practice they tend to produce muddy brown colors. For this reason, a fourth "primary" pigment, black, is often used in addition to the cyan, magenta, and yellow colors.

The color space generated is the so-called CMYK color space. The abbreviation stands for "Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black" — K stands for "Kohle" (German for coal) and is used to represent black as 'B' could be confused with 'Blue'.

In practice, mixtures of actual materials like paint tend to be less precise. Brighter, or more specific colors can be created using natural pigments instead of mixing, and natural properties of pigments can interfere with the mixing. For example, mixing magenta and green in acrylic creates a dark cyan - something which would not happen if the mixing process were perfectly subtractive. In the subtractive model, adding white to a color does not (in theory) change its hue but does reduce its saturation. In fact, adding white usually does change the hue slightly (this is known as the Abney effect), for example, adding white to red makes it slightly bluish, or pink.

Images for kids

  • The emission spectra of the three phosphors that define the additive primary colours of a CRT color video display. Other electronic colour display technologies (LCD, Plasma display, OLED) have analogous sets of primaries with different emission spectra.

  • A photograph of the red, green, and blue elements (subpixels) of an LCD. Additive mixing explains how light from these colored elements can be used for photorealistic color image reproduction.

  • Color Mixing Guide, John L. King 1925, cover and plates describing yellow, red, and blue color mixing.

  • The CIE RGB, CIE XYZ color matching functions and LMS cone fundamentals. The curves are all for 2° fields.

  • Ewald Hering's illustration of the psychological primaries. Red/green and yellow/blue form opponent pairs (top). Each color can be psychologically mixed to make other colors (bottom) with both members of the other pair but not with its opponent according to Hering.

  • The color scheme of François d'Aguilon, where the two simple colors of white (albus) and black (niger) are mixed to the "noble" colors of yellow (flavus), red (rubeus), and blue (caeruleus). Orange (aureus), purple (purpureus), and green (viridis) are each combinations of two noble colors.

  • Johann Heinrich Lambert's "Farbenpyramide" tetrahedron published in 1772. Gamboge (yellow), carmine (red), and Prussian blue pigments are used the corner swatches of each "level" of lightness with mixtures filling the others and white at the top.

  • Philipp Otto Runge's sketch showing bl (blue), g (yellow) and r (red) as the fundamental colors.

All content from Kiddle encyclopedia articles (including the article images and facts) can be freely used under Attribution-ShareAlike license, unless stated otherwise. Cite this article:

Primary color Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.

Learning colors: how to teach a child to distinguish colors and shades

It is generally accepted that by the age of three a child should learn to distinguish between primary colors. This skill is an important part of sensory development, it gives the child the opportunity to see the world in a new way. Often, if the baby does not know or confuse colors, parents have concerns about the pace of development of the child. Do I need to worry if the study of colors is not easy for a child? How to teach a child to distinguish colors? You will find answers to these questions in our article.

At what age does a child begin to see colors?

Studies have shown that children begin to perceive colors by 2-3 months. The first colors a child sees are yellow, orange, red, green. At this age, babies can already react differently to their toys of different colors (for example, a red rattle can please a child more than a blue one), look at bright pictures with enthusiasm. The baby's world quickly acquires colors, but if we talk about the ability to consciously find an object of the right color, then usually it appears in children at the age of one and a half. It is at this age that it is optimal to start learning colors in a playful way. You can voice the names of flowers to a child for up to a year, this will only benefit him. But do not demand too much from the baby, remember that his brain is actively developing, and as soon as the time comes, you will certainly see the results.

To see if your child is ready to learn colors by playing with building blocks, ask your child to point to a part that is the same color as yours. If the baby can find objects of the same color, then he is quite ready to memorize the names of colors.

Learning colors in everyday life

Children get most of their knowledge about the world in everyday life: communicating with adults and peers, observing nature, playing. The study of flowers is no exception. Sometimes a child does not need to do special exercises to learn to recognize colors. For this, it is enough that he hears the name of the color and associates it with a specific thing. During daily activities, voice for the child what color the objects are around. Whether you are drawing, playing with blocks, looking at cars in the yard, reading, swimming, eating, dressing - in each of these situations, you can gently teach your child to distinguish colors.

It is important that the study of colors does not turn into torture. You should not constantly test the child's knowledge by asking him which color is which. Soon the baby may just start to ignore you. “Let's paint the sun yellow!”, “What a delicious green cucumber!”, “Oh, where did the blue cube go? Here he is!" are examples of how you can gently help your child remember colors.

Games for learning colors and their shades

In order to get your baby interested in learning colors or to reinforce the knowledge they already have, you can offer your child to play special “color” games.

Color Sorting

Sorting games are designed to help children learn to group objects by color. Any materials at hand can be items for sorting: toys, covers, designer parts, cubes, buttons, cereals, pencils, etc. You can organize the game in various ways:

You can come up with as many options for sorting by color, it all depends on your imagination. So that the child does not lose interest in the task, connect the plot of the game with his favorite characters, toys (for example, a cat will eat from a yellow bowl, and a baby elephant from a red one, etc.).

Match a Pair

Help your child learn colors with the Match a Pair series. Ask your child to find a petal for a bug, a pot for a flower, a roof for a house, etc. You can present the baby with a deliberately wrong option and ask to correct the mistakes.

Pick up a patch

Show the child the picture with the missing details. Ask him to fill in the gaps (this can be done with plasticine, pom-poms, caps, cards, etc.).

Color Lotto

At the age of about one year, children begin to be interested in various lottos. In the color lotto, the task is to collect pictures of the same color on the card.

Colored Sensory Boxes

Create a sensory box for your baby where everything is the same color. During the game, the child will be able not only to remember the color that he sees, but also to develop fine motor skills, tactile sensitivity, thinking, and imagination.

Color days

This is one of the most interesting and popular ways to teach your child to distinguish colors. Its essence is that during the day (or several days) you draw the child's attention to objects of a certain color. For example, on a yellow day, you can dress in yellow clothes, play with yellow toys, draw a yellow chicken. Surrounded by one color, the baby will easily remember it.

Cards for learning colors

You can learn colors with your child using cards. With the help of Doman's "Colors" cards, you can introduce your baby not only to the main colors, but also to different shades. It is important not to overload the child with unnecessary information about the names of 10 shades of green or red. Learn only those shades whose names you can use in the game and life.

Board games for learning colors

Board games are a great way to learn about colors and consolidate knowledge about them. Currently, the stores offer a wide range of similar games for every taste and budget. Choose a game that suits your child.

Educational cartoons

There are many educational cartoons on the Internet that will help your child memorize colors quickly. Here is one of them:

Educational books

If your little one loves to listen to stories and look at pictures, this is the way for you. We all remember the wonderful story of V.G. Suteev "Rooster and paints", by S.Ya. Marshak has a whole “Colorful book”. You can also find many educational books that will become your faithful assistants.

Conclusions

We have listed for you different color learning games. In order for a child to master the concept of color well, it is worth adhering to a number of principles: do not rush the baby, provide a variety of material for games, discuss what you see.

Conclusion

You can start studying colors from an early age, the main thing is that it is interesting for the child. It is impossible to specify clear age limits when a child should learn primary colors. This process, like all development, is individual for each baby. The Sozvezdie Development Center has created a Montessori environment for kids, aimed at the comprehensive development of the child. In the classes "Together with Mom" ​​children in a playful way get acquainted with the concepts of color, shape and size, do thematic creative work. You can learn from our teachers how to interest a child in an activity and how to properly present him with cognitive information. Develop with us!

Prepared by a Montessori teacher
Sokolova Oksana

MDOU "Kindergarten No. 85" of the city of Yaroslavl

World of Color

Dear parents!

Developing the creative abilities of your children, we introduce preschoolers to the color . Color is mastered by children early and occupies a special place in a number of expressive means.

The development of color as a means of expression has its own dynamics: from monochromaticity through multicolor to strict color relationships and the assimilation of the laws of color combinations.

Sensor color standards are chromatic colors - red, green, blue, violet (rainbow spectrum) and achromatic colors - white, gray, black, as well as shades of all colors by lightness and saturation.

From an early age, a child knows three basic colors (red, blue, yellow) - these are

primary (or primary) colors from which all other colors are obtained by mixing. These three colors cannot be obtained by mixing any of the others.

From the second younger group, children begin to mix colors and receive secondary (additional or mixed) colors. These are the colors that can be obtained by mixing a pair of primary colors (yellow and blue make green, red and yellow make orange, blue and red make purple).

There are tertiary (derivative) colors that are obtained by mixing (combining) primary and secondary (for example, yellow and green give us yellow-green).

Mixing two colors that are not in a row in the spectrum gives an intermediate color between them, and mixing two adjacent colors gives a shade (for example, red-orange).

In nature and works of art, colors are found in complex and varied combinations.

Chromatic colors are divided into two groups - warm (from red to yellow) and cool (from green to purple) tones.

Each chromatic color or shade of a hue has a specific lightness, brightness and saturation.

The brightness of the color allows us to distinguish one color from another and give it a name.

Lightness is the degree of proximity of a given color (or shade) to white, and

saturation - the degree of its purity, that is, impurities in a given gray color of the same lightness.

In everyday life, when they denote shades of color, they usually indicate their lightness (dark green, light yellow), meaning brightness. Therefore, it is quite enough if children learn the variability of color tones in terms of lightness and the corresponding names of shades.

Some light shades have special names in everyday life (light red is called pink). It is quite acceptable for children to use the names of these shades (except for the incorrect name of light blue as blue). This refers to the naming of shades by hue (i.e., those occupying an intermediate position between neighboring colors of the spectrum). Almost all of them have “objectified” names in everyday life (lemon, lilac, raspberry, etc.)

Looking at pictures with a child, we rarely see individual colors, because the overall impression that a picture creates does not depend on each color separately, but on combination and interaction with other colors. Some colors are so dependent on each other that they are called complementary.

Referring to the color wheel, you can immediately determine which colors are complementary.

It's very simple: the complementary colors on the circle are opposite each other.

Red is the complementary color to green, yellow to purple, and blue to orange.

How Primary and Mixed Colors Become Complementary.

The relationship between primary and mixed colors is illustrated by the double color wheel. Primary colors are in the inner circle, mixed colors are in the outer circle. Complementary colors are opposite each other. The complementary color in relation to one of the main ones is a mixed color, the latter is based on two main ones.

Complementary for a mixed color is the main color that is not included in its composition. Thus, the mixed orange color, being a mixture of red and yellow, acts as a complementary color for the third primary color, which is not involved in its creation - blue.

By the age of seven, preschoolers can convey their emotional state and attitude to the depicted through a color image.

What are colors for?

Colors are given for the greater joy of life, which is created by excitement and harmony.

Learn more