Colour hunt activity with free printable colour magnifying glasses

What colours can you find in your classroom? Let’s go on a colour hunt with these free printable colour magnifying glasses! 

Color hunt activity with free printables

This activity is part of the Colour Unit in our Free Homeschool Curriculum.

Want to learn about the color wheel? Use our ready-made color theory lesson plans.

Colours are everywhere! Send your children on a colour hunt with these fun shape glasses.

Don’t think of this only as an activity for younger children. Artists and photographers often go on colour walks to develop their attention to detail. Asking our brains to look out for one particular colour can develop cognitive skills and boost creativity.

In this lesson children can:

:: learn about colours

:: learn the names of different colours and talk about hues, shades, tints and tones

:: make and play with colour-hunting glasses

:: identify colours around the classroom or home

:: develop visual discrimination skills to notice details like an artist

:: talk about colours they like and dislike

Materials needed

:: colour magnifying glasses printable – see below

:: scissors

:: contact paper – optional

Print the colour magnifying glasses from NurtureStore’s Free Printables Library on card. See below for details.

The printable includes a shape magnifying glass for:

:: red

:: orange

:: yellow

:: green

:: blue

:: purple

:: pink

:: brown

:: black

:: and white

Cut out the centre of each magnifying glass to create a ‘lens’ to look through. If you wish you can laminate the glasses which will help them last longer and also creates a good glass effect for the magnifying lens. Use biodegradable laminating material which can be composted.

Take a look at the colour magnifying glasses with your children and talk about the different colours.

Read the name on the handle of each glass.

Can you think of five things that colour?

Which colurs are similar? Which are different?

Which colour is your favourite? Are there any you don’t like? Why?

Who knows what the word ‘shade’ means? Does anyone know what ‘hue’, ‘tone’, and ‘tint’ mean?

In art, a hue is the name for what we most often call a colour.

A shade is a colour that has been mixed with black, reducing the lightness of the original colour.

A tint is a colour mixed with white, which makes it lighter.

And a tone is a colour mixed with grey, both tinting and shading the colour.

Hunting for colours

Let’s investigate what colours we can find around our home or classroom.

Start by making some predictions. What colour do you think will be easiest to find in the kitchen? In the bathroom? In the garden? Do you think there is a colour that will be difficult to find?

Then head off on a colour hunt. Use your colour magnifying glass to focus your child’s attention to look for one certain colour. Walk along like a detective, peering through the glass on the hunt for something red, or something black or something pink.

Look for colours in different rooms and in different cupboards.

You might ask each child to find an item to match the colour they are hunting for and bring it back to the group to share and talk about.

Alternatively you can practice recall by asking children to remember the things they saw, and writing a list of them all on the board.

You might also like to take photographs of all the places you spot one particular colour and use them to create a photo collage.

For even more of a challenge, take a close-up photo of just a section of each coloured item and see if everyone else can guess what they are.