Before colour theory – learning to discriminate, describe, and order colours

Abstract

From infancy, young children will experience a wide range of colours in their surroundings. The richness of these experiences can be diminished when they are first taught about colour. They are taught colour names, the order of colours in the rainbow, the concept of primary colours, and the association of colours with emotions. In each case the focus is on vivid colours only. This article is focused on an alternative to early colour education which begins with learning how to discriminate and describe colours in all their variety – not just the vivid colours but pale, muted, and dark colours as well. This first step is followed by activities exploring the attributes of colour in two dimensional exercises and then building three-dimensional colour models. All the activities are designed as ‘scaffolded’ steps toward understanding and visualising the relationships of the colours to each other. We argue that a well-developed awareness, combined with a framework for ordering and describing colours, should be in place before the introduction of more formal aspects of colour theory.