A few days ago, I showed you how we used our donated egg cartons for art. Â Today, I’d like to show you how we used those same egg cartons for a simple, yet engaging, color mixing activity…
For this activity, we set out cups filled with watered down water color paints, pipettes, and egg cartons. Â We set all of these out on a table, along with a few paper towels to help soak up our drips and spills. Â The children each got their own empty egg carton and went to work on creating their own beautiful set of colors…
We’ve explored color mixing many different ways in the past, but I think this is one of my very favorite ways to let the children explore this process…
Essentially, the children take on the role of little scientists, experimenting with different color combinations. Â And while it may seem like a rather simple process to us grown-ups, the skills that the children are gaining are quite complex…
First, the children must figure out how to get the colored water into the pipettes. Â This requires some fine motor skills and quite a bit of coordination to know when to squeeze and let go of the bulb. Â This, alone, always takes some practice for our children even if they’ve used the pipettes before…
Then the children must use their critical thinking skills to determine how much liquid to put into each individual cup and when to stop before it overflows…
And then there is the whole color mixing process. Â Some children will carefully consider what colors they want to mix together. Â They may already know that red and yellow make orange, but they test out their theory just to be sure. Â And it’s so much fun to listen to them squeal in delight as they discover a new color combination that is to their liking…
Inevitably, you will have the children who just love the process so much that they don’t really care about the final product and their colors eventually become a brown muddled mess. Â That’s okay, too, because those children are just as engaged, sometimes more so, in this wonderfully creative scientific process…
Cleaning up after a color mixing activity like this one is really half the fun. Â Because almost always there is beauty to be found in the spills and messes…
Sometimes when you have such a fantastic response to an activity, you simply can’t discard the product. Â Stick around because tomorrow I will be sharing what we did with our fabulous color mixing creations. Â You won’t want to miss it!
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