Living / 25 January, 2019 / Nanny Anita

Magical Colour Mixing Activity for Kids

I have been meaning to do some sort of colour mixing activity for ages with my youngest charge. When we do any sort of painting she generally mixes all the colours together and ends up with a murky puddle brown colour.  Which is fine, as long as she is having fun, that is all that really matters. But it would be nice for her to learn that mixing certain colours will magically make a new colour.

To create your own magical colour mixing activity you will need:

• Muffin tin
• Paint
• Paintbrushes
• Pipettes
• Paper

I set up an invitation to play for her after nursery had finished and she was eager to start mixing when she walked into the kitchen.  Powdered tempera paint worked well as you can make it to any consistency you like. I also put out pipettes for her to transfer the paints without accidentally mixing them together.

Carefully mixing blue and red

To begin with I asked her what would happen if we mixed certain colours together and she would try and guess then we would try it out.  Her face was an absolute picture, to her it was magic, and let’s face it it is rather magical how you can take two different colours and make a new one.  I even did some research into why it happens and not one thing I read gave an easy or satisfactory answer, so I am  happy for her to think that it is magic.

Using the pipettes was good for her fine motor skills

This colour mixing activity was great for her.  She kept wanting to try different combinations and see what happened if you added more of one colour than another.

Carefully adding the grass to her Lion attacking a snake picture.

After she had finished mixing we then got out some cool colour diffusing sheets (they are made of the same material as coffee filters) and did some painting.  I made sure that we now had enough paintbrushes for each colour so we didn’t mix them all together to make brown, but sure enough the moment she started to paint she kept putting one colour on top of the others which turned it all brown.  I did remind her that just like in the paint pots if we mix all the colours together on the paper it would make brown.  When she started painting again, she seemed to take it all on board and really thought about what and where she was painting.  The whole activity lasted well over an hour and even at dinner she was saying what colours made what.

This activity may help development of:

• Scientific exploration – making hypothesis and carrying out experiments
• Vocabulary
• Fine Motor Skills
• Understanding of colour mixing

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