When teaching your preschoolers about colors and their relationships with one another, a color wheel can be very useful. But instead of just displaying and talking about it, how about having students create their own? Jenn, creator of the blog Mama Jenn, offers an exciting color wheel printable that will help you introduce the concepts of primary and secondary colors to your child or students - and offer them fun, hands-on exploration in the process!

Color Wheel Applications

Jenn recommends using colored water, eye droppers, and toothpicks to fill in each circle on the color wheel. Not only will your students learn about color theory, they'll be strengthening fine motor skills as they carefully drop water onto each dot and mix the colors with a toothpick. Be sure to visit her full post for a list of supplies and instructions! Once your students have completed this exercise a few times, consider the following activities:

Provide students with large circle cutouts in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Based solely on the combination of colored dots presented and what they have learned, invite students to match the cutouts to their appropriate place on the color wheel. If they find this tricky, have them "test" the colors again using Jenn's method.
Use the color wheel printables as play-dough mixing mats, inviting students to follow the "recipe" found at each place (i.e. if the mat shows two red and two yellow dots, have students create two small red dough balls and two small yellow dough balls and knead them together).
Put a twist on Jenn's idea by adding shaving cream to the mix. Provide students with two color wheel worksheets - one to be used as a "recipe card" and the other for mixing colors. On the mixing card, place a dollop of shaving cream in each circle. Invite students to follow the "recipe" at each place on the color wheel, adding small drops of food coloring to the cream and mixing it with a toothpick or paint brush handle.

When you visit Jenn's site for the download, be sure to check out the rest of her blog. She has many more great early childhood posts that your preschoolers are sure to love!

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