Elementary Color

by Milton Bradley

After many months of labor in securing samples of material colors, and many days spent with the spectrum, a committee of artists, scientists, teachers, and artizans unanimously decided that æsthetically and psychologically the colors adopted were the best possible material expression of the six localities in the spectrum corresponding to the feeling or psychological perception of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. Many subsequent experiments have apparently proved that practically the same six colors best serve the purpose of primaries from which to make all others by combination.

In accordance with these selections the educational colored papers have been made, and since that time an expert scientist has accurately located each of these colors in the spectrum by its wave length. Consequently after the children have come to know the six colors in the sun spectrum the six standard colors of the papers may be shown as the best imitations possible. In studying the six colors from the spectrum in a schoolroom it frequently happens that one color may be best seen on the floor, another on the wall or even the blackboard, and another on the ceiling, and after the order of the colors in the whole spectrum has been observed, it is well to get each color where it can be best secured.

Paper Color Tablets.

When the spectrum has been studied so that the children have some idea of the six colors and their location relative to each other, give each of the children a package of the colored paper tablets, one inch by two inches, containing the eighteen normal spectrum colors, i.e., those in the central vertical column in the Chart of Pure Spectrum Scales, Page 41, and tell them to select from the eighteen the six which they have seen in the spectrum and which may be named to them as red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. [C]

If a sheet of neutral gray cardboard can be secured for use on each desk all early color work will be more valuable, because of the undesirable effect of the usual yellow or orange color of the wood of the desk.

If some of the pupils do not make the correct selection of the papers it may be well to let the error pass for that time and have another exhibition of the spectrum before the next trial. Get as many of them as possible to make the selection of the six colors from the eighteen solely by comparison with the spectrum. Later if some are still unable to succeed, a paper spectrum may be shown to them, or what is better, six bits of paper like their own, pasted on a card, with an interval as wide as two papers between each two. When every child can readily select the six standard colors from the eighteen then all of them may with advantage be told to lay the six in a row on the gray cardboard or desk, in their proper order, and sufficiently separated to allow room for two other papers between each two. When all have made the attempt and some have failed to arrange the papers correctly the card having them properly mounted may again be shown and each one in error may make the necessary corrections by comparison.

In a solar spectrum such as is possible in the ordinary schoolroom the intermediate colors between the standards cannot be very distinctly seen but the child can be shown that between the red and orange, with which he is familiar, there are colors different from both and possibly he may be led to see that these colors seem to be a mixture of the two. With this impression in the minds of the children the following experiment may be a very interesting psychological test of the natural color perception of each child, or in other words his "color feeling."

Ask the children to arrange the remaining twelve papers between the six standards in pairs and one outside of the red and violet at the ends. This exercise will serve to bring each of the other colors to the critical attention of the children so that they may not be entirely strangers to them in the succeeding exercises. At this stage the color wheel or color top or both will be most valuable.

Color Wheel or Top.

If the wheel is available let the teacher place on it combined red and orange disks of medium size and in front a small red disk. Before beginning the six papers should be laid on the desk in order, separated by two spaces. Call attention to the fact that the red disks are like the red sample of paper. Explain how the disks are joined and that the two larger ones can be made to show more or less of the orange and the red.