Color Wheels

I am preparing for a program tomorrow based on Go Away, Big Green Monster and made these neat color wheels that I would like to share.  

To Make Your Own:
I started with 6-inch cake circles.  I bought a pack of 10 at Michaels for under $5.

Each cake circle was divided into 6 sections.  I used a ruler and a black Sharpie to make my lines.

I wanted some bright color spots for each section so I visited my local Home Depot and picked up some paint samples.  I am a big fan of Behr paint samples for my crafts.  I used my 1-inch hole punch to punch circles out of the paint samples.

I glued the circles onto my cake circle.  I used rainbow order, rather than that of a traditional color wheel.

I bought clothespins and used a colored Sharpie to color the ends to match my circles and to write the color name on each clothespin.

This will go out for the kids to play with tomorrow at our program.  They will match the colored clothespin with the colored space on the cake circle.

Here's why I like this:

• I used ordinary materials to make something fun for kids to play with.  It didn't cost a lot of money and is easy to recreate at home.  Whenever I pull something like this out, the light bulbs in the parents' heads start flashing.
• Clothespins are good for practicing fine motor skills.  By exercising their hands, kids are getting strong enough to write.  It really comes back to early literacy.
• Colors are great to work on word recognition.  The colored writing on the clothespins gives kids a really big clue as to what the word is.  The more they see it, the better they will recognize it.  It is instant reinforcement of what words mean.