I recently came across several bottles of powdered tempera paint stuck in the very back of my supply closet and realized, we haven’t done much with powdered paint all year. I thought it would be a nice change and an interesting product for my students to explore…
For my Prek kids, I invited them to mix up their own paint colors using a teaspoon for the powder and a dropper to add water…
Our mixing trays are empty plastic egg cartons left over from Easter. I knew they would come in handy one of these days…
The most challenging part of this process for the children was not starting off with too much powder. As the children added water, they were able to see how the powder changed from a solid to a liquid and the more water added, the more runny the paint would be….
The children were invited to mix the colors as they wished and to try samples of the colors as they went along on the paper that was covering the table…
As the children mixed the colors, new colors were invented so we began to come up with names that would describe our new colors like “burnt orange” or “dandelion yellow”….
The children explored the process until we ran out of time. Â We saved our paint trays for use the next day…
As a side note, giving the children small spaces and tools to work with helped control the amount of powder that was used throughout the process so I still had plenty left for lots of other occasions. I just need to stop putting the powdered paint away in the very back of my closet so I can remember to use it…
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