Have you ever heard of a three marker challenge? I’m not sure where the concept originated, but my daughter is ALL about the three marker color challenges lately. Essentially, we dump our markers into a big bowl, close our eyes, and randomly pull out three markers. Whatever colors you get are the ones you have to use to draw your picture.

“Oh my, you got pink, purple, and green again? Your favorite colors that work perfectly for drawing flowers? You are so lucky!” Said Mama as she pulled out brown, grey, and and that odd shade of orange that no one ever uses…

Because I kept pulling “blah” colors

Because we’ve played the same three marker challenge a bajillion times

Because I want to expose my children to new concepts and vocabulary… (yes, perfect!) I suggested, “What if we try choosing three colors that form a triad to make our art?!”

You can just feel the blank stare that I received in response to that, can’t you?

But this mama persisted, and the next day, we worked together to make this Epic Color Wheel Project. In the process, we learned all about color theory, analogous colors, complementary colors, and triadic colors. And we came up with a new way to choose colors for our three marker challenge!

Exploring Color Family Unit Study

Before we get into the Color Wheel Project, I want to share with you one of my Family Unit Studies that your little artist will love!

It’s called Exploring Color, and covers everything from the physics of color, to the anatomy of color vision, the science behind rainbows and natural pigments, color theory, and some famous artists like Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol.

Phew! There’s a lot of fun, hands-on color learning packed into this beautiful unit study!

If you’re new here, let me explain. This unit study, like all of our ever-growing library of unit studies, takes one big topic—Color—and breaks it down into ten manageable, bite-sized learning topics. This format gives you the freedom to dive into learning at a pace that works for your family.

Each of the ten topics included with a unit study contains everything you need for that topic, including:

• a curated YouTube video,
• suggested information to read,
• a “what’s happening” section,
• an interesting fact,
• a discussion questions
• literacy and math extension questions,
• and an ultimate-can’t-be-beat hands-on activity!

Perhaps you do one topic per day, perhaps one per week. Whatever suits your fancy! You can learn all about color and explore a topic from start to finish in about 1-2 hours.

Free Color Mixing Activity & Template

One more thing before we get into the Color Wheel Project!

You’ll want to grab this FREE Color Mixing Activity & Color Wheel Template. It is one of the hands-on activities from the Exploring Color Family Unit Study and a wonderful way to introduce children to primary, secondary, and tertiary colors before you create your color wheel project. Get your copy right here:

Hands-On Color Wheel Project for Kids

Materials

For this project, you will need:

• Paper plates
• Markers (or paint and paintbrush if you want to do color mixing)
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Black pen
• Coffee (er… something you can use to trace a small circle)
• Protractor (optional)

Create Your Color Wheel

To make this interactive color wheel, we’ll start by dividing one of the paper plates into 12 sections. This will become our color wheel!

If you have your trusty protractor on hand, you could use this as an opportunity to teach your child about degrees. There are 360 degrees in a circle, so if we want to divide our circle into 12 equal pieces, how many degrees would be in each piece? 30!

If you haven’t touched a protractor since 6th grade, ahem… don’t fret! You can simply eyeball it. Using a ruler, draw a vertical and horizontal line that both pass through the center point of the plate. You’ll now have four quadrants; divide each of those quadrants into three equal slices. You know, eyeballing it.

Or, if you’re extremely lucky, your plate will come with built-in markings every 15 degrees. Woohoo!!

Next, it’s time to add some color. If you would like to try some color mixing, you can do this part with paint. Otherwise, you can color each section with markers, crayons, or whatever suits your fancy.

Primary Colors

We’ll start by adding the primary colors to the color wheel: red, yellow, and blue. Make sure you leave three blank wedges between each color.

Secondary Colors

Next, we’ll add the secondary colors: green, purple, and orange. If you’re using paint, you can create these colors by mixing your red, yellow, and blue paints:

• Red + Yellow = Orange
• Yellow + Blue = Green
• Blue + Red = Purple

Tertiary Colors

And last but not least, we’ll add the tertiary colors to the color wheel! You can mix these using your primary and secondary colors, or find a marker or crayon that works for each shade:

• Red + Orange = Red-Orange
• Red + Purple = Red-Purple
• Yellow + Orange = Yellow-Orange
• Yellow + Green = Yellow-Green
• Blue + Green = Blue-Green
• Blue + Purple = Blue-Purple

We also wrote the color names below each color on our color wheel:

Learn About Color Theory with a Color Wheel Project

Now that your color wheel is ready, we’re going to learn about some color combinations you can make with it!

To do this, we’ll make covers from paper plates with portions cut out so we can rotate them around our color wheel to show different color combinations.

To create the covers, trace a circle in the center of a paper plate, then trace the wedges that form the color combination you’re creating and cut them out:

Complementary Colors are across from each other on the color wheel:

Triadic Colors are three colors spaced equally apart on the color wheel:

Hmm… three colors that aren’t grey, brown, and blah orange!? Ladies and gentlemen, we have found our new three marker color challenge!

Close your eyes and point to one of the colors on the color wheel. Now open your eyes, line up the Triadic Color Wheel Cover so your chosen color is in one of the windows, and—Voila!—three random-ish colors that mama can work with. And a fun little activity that we can both enjoy together.

I hope you enjoy this color wheel project with your little ones too!

If you want to take a deep dive into all things art and color with your kids, you’re going to want the Exploring Color Family Unit Study!

Get the Complete Exploring Color Family Unit Study

https://shop.howweelearn.com/products/family-unit-study-exploring-color

Thank you so much for reading, my friend,

xo
Sarah

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