A Flower Color Wheel- Color Theme

Spring seems to be arriving early, and the warm weather is bringing us the year's first blossoms.  Miss E and I explored the neighborhood hunting for flowers.  She carried her camera, and took a picture of every flowering plant along our walk.  Here are couple of her many photos.




Since Miss E has been a toddler, it is common for us to talk about the colors of flowers when we are admiring them, and I decided to use her interest in flowers to learn more about colors.  We made a flower color wheel using her photos.  Depending on your child's development level, he may help with some or all of the project.  I guided my 4 1/2 year old daughter and discussed ideas with her, but the completed project is mostly her work.

Materials
Photos of flowers - We used the photos taken by Miss E. If you can't print out photos, you can cut pictures from a magazine.
Scissors
Large sheet of paper
Glue
Pastels for coloring - You can use crayons or markers, but they won't mix well like the pastels.

Directions
-Create a color wheel on a circular piece of paper or a paper plate.  Your child will color in the 3 primary colors (red, blue, yellow)first.  Explain how mixing two primary colors makes a secondary color.  Using the pastels, your child will mix two primary colors together to create green, purple, and orange.



-Cut out the triangular color shapes on color wheel and arrange in circular pattern on a poster board or large sheet of paper.  Glue colors on paper.  Leave space in the middle for white because white is not often found on basic color wheels, but we found a lot of white flowers.
-Cut out pictures of flowers.

-Sort pictures by color of flower.  At this point, there may be a lot of discussion about colors because not all flowers are easily identified by a pure primary or secondary color.  Allow child to arrange flower pictures however she chooses next to the color wheel shapes.  -Once pictures are organized, glue the pictures onto the paper.  

Once your child has completed the flower color wheel, discuss which colors were more prominent and which colors were more rare.  Your child can count how many flowers of each color she found.  When my daughter realized there were no green flowers, she added some pictures of leaves to the color wheel.  We wondered together why there were no orange flowers.  
This activity covers the subject of art by learning about color theory by creating a color wheel and sorting flowers by color.  Mathematics is supported by sorting, counting, and comparing.  Children learn more about science by observing the natural world around them and describing it.  
This post is shared on the Kids Co-Op Linky Party.