Color
Color should be taught if possible from objects and pictures. The six colors can be illustrated by fruits, as an orange, a rosy apple, a purple plum, a red cherry. The children’s dresses, their eyes and hair, can all be brought into a lesson on color. In spring and summer flowers make charming illustrations, e.g., different colors seen in roses, and the autumn-tinted leaves can be used likewise.
Then there are colors in pictures, trees, besides colored wools, beads, tablets, etc.
Ask for flowers and fruits of certain colors, e.g., what flower is yellow? What fruit is red?, etc. Also colors of birds and animals, and let the children say what colors look nice together. In summer this may be shown by arranging a number of flowers in a bouquet.
In the flowers themselves colors always harmonize, e.g., forget-me-not is blue, and has a yellow center, because blue and yellow look pretty together.
Spring flowers are mostly yellow, and have pale green leaves, for green and yellow look pretty together.
The red poppy and blue cornflower look pretty among the yellow corn, and there are yellow flowers among the corn also.
Harmony of color may be further illustrated by the dressing of a doll, or a story of a little girl who was taken to the shop by her mamma. The little girl was to have a new dress, cloak, and hood; what colors would her mamma choose?
Secondary Colors.—Teach that red, blue and yellow are the first or primary colors, from which other colors may be made. A child’s box of paints and six small tumblers are required for the following illustration.
Pour a little water into each tumbler, and mix a little red paint in one, a little blue in the next, and a little yellow in the third. These are the primary colors.
Let us see what can be made by mixing two of them together. Take an empty tumbler. Pour in a little blue water and a little yellow. Mix together and the children will see that green is produced. Now take another tumbler and mix blue and red in it; this makes purple.
In another tumbler show that red and yellow make orange. “What beautiful thing have you seen in the sky showing all these colors?” “A Rainbow.”
This is a most interesting lesson, and if the tumblers, etc., are not obtainable, the same experiment may be shown on a piece of white cardboard. Paint the colors in stripes on the cardboard, first the three primary, which should be allowed to stand; then the secondary are produced by rubbing one color over another, e.g., paint over the red with blue, and purple is produced. Over the blue stripe paint a little yellow, and we have green. Over the yellow stripe paint red, and orange is seen.
The primary colors are Red, Yellow, Blue,
The Red and Blue mixed will show Purple to you;
Mix Yellow and Blue if you wish to make Green,
Mix Yellow and Red, then bright Orange is seen.
Color Story
After the forms and colors have been learned, they may be woven into an interesting story, thus:
“A man had a large piece of land to make into a garden; he gave a piece to each of his children, and said they might make small beds of any shape that they liked.
“So Johnnie made a round bed” (draw shape on board, and let children copy on slate), “and Willie had a square bed; Mary said her bed should be oblong, and Nellie made hers oval” (draw each on board, and let the children copy). “Then Gerty wanted hers to be the shape of a semicircle, and Harry said his should be very pretty, for he would make it crescent shape, like the moon.”
When the blackboard is full of shapes the teacher might say: “Now you would like to know what these children had growing in their beds. Johnnie had a pink rose-bush in the middle of his bed.
“Willie sowed red Poppy seeds in rows in his square bed, and Mary had a yellow Iris in the center of hers, with blue Forget-me-nots all round. You remember that blue and yellow look pretty together.”
Whenever possible, pin the flower named on the shape representing the flower bed.
The story should be continued until all the “beds” have flowers in them. The children may be allowed to suggest names of flowers and should be encouraged to choose colors that will harmonize.