This activity was inspired by one of our new favorite books, The Crayon: A Colorful Tale About Friendship (affiliate link) by Simon Rickerty, and is a perfect painting activity to practice color mixing and learning primary and secondary colors. We have our color family paintings hanging up on our bulletin board and use them frequently as references. The funny faces make me smile every time I look at them, so come craft with us today and learn about a fun new book in the process.
The book starts out with a funny Red and Blue circle coloring with crayons. They end up having a sword fight with their crayons (which my kid’s think is hilarious), and one of the crayons breaks. That’s when Purple shows up and Red starts to feel left out. The ending is adorable and has a sweet message about friendship while making color mixing fun for kids!

Color Family Painting Activity
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Pin Me Please đŸ™‚ |
Supplies:
Paint
Paint brush
Craft paper & thick paper to make a stencil
Circle Stencil or a milk cap and smaller cap (optional)
Googly eyes
Glue
Crayons or markers
Directions:
You can adjust the size and amount of houses you want to make. Make them smaller, and they could fit on one piece of paper, or you could add in other color families like Red+White = Pink, Red+Green = Brown, Black + White = Gray).
1. Use the thick paper to make a stencil for the houses. You need 1 long rectangle to make the walls and a large triangle for the roof.
2. Use the stencils to draw 3 houses. Paint the walls of the house with 1 primary color, and paint the roof of the house with the corresponding secondary color (Red+Blue for walls = Purple roof, Yellow+Red walls = Orange roof , Blue+Yellow walls = Green roof).
3. Use your circle stencil to paint the matching color families inside each house. Glue googly eyes on and draw legs and arms. (Instead of stencils we used the caps to make our circles by brushing paint on them and pressing it on the paper like a stamp).