Most children love colors and mixing them together. They get the opportunity to play with their own creativity by making different combinations and shades.
How do we mix different colors, make a lighter shade or a darker shade?Offering color mixing activities is a great way to allow the children to discover the outcomes for themselves, and to be amazed by the results.
The activities in this blog post will have children mixing and matching their own colors in order to discover what they need to make the color green – and the rest of the colors in the rainbow.
These color mixing lessons suit kids of all ages, take each activity and adapt for the children according to their level and how deep they wan’t to go.
Exploring Green
Do you know what colors make green? These fun color mixing activities for kids will help them learn what colors make green, and explore elements of color theory in more depth.
Color is an important component of art. It can add vibrancy to your design and communicate the message you are trying to get across.
So what does green make us feel, and think of? Green is the color of growth, of new beginnings.
In this post, we will be using green as our example but you can take these ideas and replicate the activities with other colors.
Collecting and Ordering Shades of Green
The children can mix up different shades of green with paint, and cut out squares of each green shade – or go on a color hunt in magazines and print outs, to find different shades of green to use for this activity.
Paint color samples from a DIY store are also great to use for this activity!
Let’s explore all kinds of green hues. Ask the children to gather or mix different greens – light green, lighter green, dark green, darker green, olive green, lime green, mint green, pale green, pastel green, bright green, sage green, tree green, forest green and every kind of green they can think of. Which shade of green is their favorite? and why?
Once they have found a big enough variety of green shades and colors, have the kids organise them into the grid. This activity allows children to consider how they want to arrange their different types of green, from light to dark or from a more yellowish green to blue green and so on.
We can talk about color temperature. What makes warm colors and cool colors seem that way? Ask the children to sort their shades of green from the above grid activity into warm and cool.
Download
Download this grid template below, and remember this color and shades ordering worksheet can be used for any color that you want to focus on.
Go on a Color Hunt
Go on a color hunt all around the house, to find as many green objects as possible in all different shades and then order them from lightest to darkest, and so on.
Color Mixing Printable Template
Want to know what colors make green? There’s a fun way to find out. Kids can test their color mixing skills by mixing up different combinations of three primary colors on this color mixing activity sheet.
This page works by mixing all three combinations of the three primary colors. How do you make green, but also how do you make purple and orange?
Kids can experiment with this easy to use color mixing page.
Use this color mixing worksheet with paint, or laminate the printed page and use as a play dough mat for play dough color mixing which is so much fun for younger children.
After finishing this color mixing page, children will see first hand that their blue paint and yellow paint makes a basic color green.
You can also check out our mess free color mixing idea using paint in zip lock bags.
Download
Download the color mixing page as a PDF file for easy printing. Click the download button below for your free instant digital file.
Color Mixing with Tonal Values
Older children can explore color mixing in more detail, introducing the concept of tonal values.
What are tonal values?
In simple terms…
- Hue is the pure (original) color
- Tint is a hue + white
- Tone is a hue + gray
- Shade is a hue + black
Read more about this, along with primary colors, secondary colors and tertiary colors
Here is a color wheel to look at with the children. Using this wheel you can talk about complementary colors, and why certain color combinations are considered more pleasing.
Analogous colors are groups of three colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel. Have the kids look at the color wheel and see if they can pick out some examples – can they find groups of analogous colors at both ends of the green spectrum of the color wheel?
Pure colors acquire tonal values with the addition of gray, black, or white. Use this tonal value chart as a reference for making your own hues, tints, and tones. You can use this later as a reference for painting.
Color mixing worksheet made with adapted template from Canva
How to use the Tonal Values Color Mixing Worksheet
Using paints (either watercolor or acrylic works best) fill up the first row of squares on the page with pure red, yellow, and blue hues.
Next, mix a small amount white paint into the colors on your palette. Use separate wells in your paint palette so that you don’t contaminate the pure colors.
Fill the next row with the resulting lighter colors, which will be labeled “tints.”
Next, mix a little bit of gray paint with the colors in fresh wells on your palette and fill the third row with the new color.
These resulting colors are your “tones.”
For the final step, mix some black paint into the pure colors. Fill the last row with these darker colors, which are labeled “shades.”
The chart is now completed.
Download
What is your Perfect Green?
How to Make Green Color?
From the color mixing experiments so far, the children have learnt that green is made from yellow and blue.
So what happens when you use different shades of yellow and different shades of blue, and how will this affect the resulting green?
What about if you use different amounts and ratios? A lot of blue and a little yellow – or vice versa?
Have the kids try different color combinations with varying shades of cadmium yellow, mustard yellow, lemon yellow, ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, Prussian blue, cool blue… all kinds of different variations to explore with different results.
It’s fun to take a look at each resulting color.
Which combination do they feel gives the best results? Each color has a lot of shades, so blue + yellow = green is not always just as simple as you might think.
This activity is so cool because it gives kids a real life experience in which they get to actually mix colors and explore their color preferences. This activity is fun, educational, and helps children develop their creativity.
Share
If you enjoyed these activities and free printable resources, please feel free to share with friends, family or colleagues so everyone can use them.
We always appreciate pins to your Pinterest Board, thanks so much!
So get the paints and colors out and get busy mixing and exploring with the kids. Happy painting and creating! Let’s make green together, and so much more.
This is great thanks for sharing!
This is a great post! I am getting those printables for my niece ! Thanks
Love this post 🙂