Color Theory: Warm and Cool Make Neutral

Ages 3-5
Learning to identify warm and cool colors in nature, and reflecting on how warm and cool mixed together create a neutral temperature both in temperature students can feel, and in color they can see.

Objectives:

• Students will identify warm colors: red, yellow, orange
  
• Students will identify cool colors: blue, green, purple
  
• Students will associate warm colors with warm things such as lava and fire
  
• Students will associate cool colors with cool things such as the ocean and icebergs
  

Key Terms:

• Neutral: somewhere between two extremes
  

Materials

• Cups
  
• warm and cold water
  
• 8x10 white construction paper
  
• Water-soluble markers (crayola is good)
  
• Sponges
  

Activity: Warm and Cool water neutralize

• Fill one cup with warm water and ask students to feel it
  
• Fill one cup with cold water and ask students to feel it
  
• Ask students to predict what will happen if the two are mixed together. Will the new water be warm? Cool? Or somewhere in the middle?
  
• Pour both water cups into a third cup and ask students to feel it.
  
• Discuss how warm and cool togher make a neutral temperature, or one that is somewhere between warm and cool.
  

Story:

• Read DK Eyewitness Books: Weather (or any story that shows hot and cold things in nature)
  
• Ask students to identify warm things (wildfire, the sun, lava, etc.) and cool things (the ocean, ice, icebergs, etc.). Ask them to identify what colors these things are.
  

Activity: Warm and Cool Drawings

• Tell the students they are going to create a warm drawing and a cool drawing. Ask them to think of all the hot things they saw in the story. What colors were they? How about the the cold things? What colors were they.
  
• Pass out 8x10 white paper instruct students to select only warm colors and try to fill the whole paper. Once this is done, instruct students to select only cool colors and repeat the same process. These drawings can be of anything, but be sure to remind children that they are for an experiment and they will not be keeping them.
  
• Review what happened when the students mixed warm and cool water at the beginning of class. The water became neutral. (Repeat this process if the kids forgot)
  
• Ask students to predict what will happen if we mix warm and cool colors. We will get neutral colors, or colors that are somewhere between warm and cool.
  
• Lay the two pieces of paper, marker sides together, flat on the table.
  
• Provide students with damp sponges and instruct them to make the whole paper wet. The colors will start to bleed and mix together.
  
• Peel the sheets apart and identify what colors have been created. Explain that brown is a neutral color, and just like warm and cool water makes a neutral temperature, warm and cool colors make neutral colors. ​