Before you dive into the ocean of color, spend a little time exploring the shallows of language. Explain to your students that “complement” and “compliment” are two different words. They are homonyms: words that sound or are spelled the same but have different meanings. Tell your students that to “compliment” -- with an “i” -- means to praise or admire something or someone, while “complement” -- with an “e” -- means something that makes another thing complete or perfect.
Show your students a simple color wheel comprised of 12 colors. Explain to them (or remind them) that the color wheel is built upon the different relationships colors have to each other. Show them the relationships found in the color wheel: primary (colors that cannot be made by adding others), secondary (a mixture of two primaries), tertiary (a mixture of a primary and a secondary), and analogous (colors located close together on the wheel). Once you've covered these basics, show your students the complementary colors.
Have your students construct a paper stained-glass window with four quadrants, with each quadrant featuring a pair of complementary colors. Have them make the frame, the quadrants and the lines within the quadrants -- all the metal parts of a real stained-glass window -- using black strips of paper. Have them glue complementary-colored tissue paper to the back of the frame. Hang the finished paper windows in a window for a pleasing decoration and as a handy reminder of complementary colors. Hands-on learning of this type is the most effective type of learning for young children. Allowing them to create a tangible representation of the lesson helps to solidify the concept of complementary colors.
Using a ruler and a pencil, have your each student divide a piece of white paper into six equal sections to represent parts of a color wheel. Ask every student to draw the outline of his name in block letters in the center of the page -- first using a pencil, and darkening the lines with black marker. Have the students color each section as a color wheel while leaving the letters of their name white. Ask the students to color the parts of the letters that fall within the boundaries of each color wheel section the appropriate complementary color. Mount the finished work on construction paper. This activity is particularly beneficial for students who learn best through tactile and visual approaches.