Children's Art: Color mixing

Yesterday in my little children painting group we tried out color mixing. I thought it a good idea for every child to know the basic principles of colors, how they belong to each other and react with each other.

We used acrylic paint this time. First every child received the three primary colors on a palette.

I asked them to try mixing any possible secondary colors. After a few shades of grey-brown showed up, that kids pretty soon figured out, how it works all by themselves :-)

I asked them to figure out how each of them very personally would sort the colors, which ones for their personal sensation should stand to the next one.

Then, the received black and white to do some tertiary colors...

At the end, they simply painted using their new colors. The boy interestingly preferred to paint one color on top of the other to get the mixing effect, whereas the girls used a more academic and well organized approach ;-)