Mixing prime colours

Colour Exploration Stage 2: Mixing Prime Colours.

Dimples has known his colours for a while now, his lights and darks and all the colours in between!
I guess the next thing is to learn how colours mix together.

This is a Clean and Easy Lesson in Colour mixing for children of all ages. All you need are your Prime colour in food colouring, shaving foam or hair Mouse and some seal locked sandwich bags.

    RED                              YELLOW                                BLUE  

I stuck a small Coloured sticker on the plastic bags to help the learning process so that after the mixing was complete Dimples could see which bags started with what colours. 


What you will need

We did our Secondary Colours; Red/Yellow,  Yellow/Blue,  Blue/Red & I did an unmarked one so that Dimples could mix his own colour, knowing that he would choose all 3 prime colours.

First squirt your shaving cream in down the centre, leave small gaps on either side so your colours can get right in.  Do not over fill it, you want to be able to seal shut your bag easily without getting shaving cream into the sealing lock grooves. If this happens you could end up with an explosion of food colour and shaving cream all over your child's face, then it will be neither a clean nor an easy lesson in colour mixing.



Dimples makes green as the Red and Blue bag waits.

That's it! Seal it closed and one by one let your child mix the colours together. It was a success, Dimples was so enthusiastic as he mixed and mushed the bag around saying "I can see a bit of ..... Green! It made green mama"



Our mixed colours, showing what Prime colour was added to begin with.

 

Not only did Dimples watch and learn colour theory but he got a work out mixing the shaving cream. This is a great activity to strengthen the muscles needed for writing with all the pushing, scrunching, grabbing, pinching, squeezing and moulding. The shaving cream in the bag feels great as well, like a fluffy pillow.


The experimental mixing bag turned out into a light baby poo brown. I didn't get a photo but mid way through mixing it looks delicious! Not kidding, it looked like a rainbow paddle pop . So from a rainbow paddle pop to baby poo brown Dimples learnt that some colours mix well and some not so well.





The rainbow paddlepop colour with all 3 colours.

That turned baby pop brown!?

It was an interesting experiment and he loved it. We had a great discussion about colour, how there is only 3 prime colours and we went through the house pointing out colours as Dimples thought about what colours would be used to make it.

Happy Adventures

Pretend cooking: wild berry muffins

Pretend Cooking : Wild berry Muffins in the outdoor oven

For some quick fun messy play in the afternoon sun Dimples cooked up a storm in his outdoor kitchen. 

He mixed together Water beads & Shaving foam until bumpy.

Added some red & some blue colour (food colour/water in spray bottles).

 Poured in some blue dessicated coconut.

Then he decided "this needs to be mixed by ARM" & squeezed the mixtures around.

I am not to keen on using real cooking ingredients just for the sake of it, but these were things Id had for a while that would be close to getting tossed anyway :)  The water beads have been used over & over again, the shaving foam... well you can grab it for $1 a can and you only need a few squirts for some fun messy play!

Add nuts & spoon into the muffin tray

Don't forget more colour for extra juiciness!!

Cook in the outdoor oven.  DONE!!! 

Then feed it to the dog  (who happens to be blue on this occasion)

Lots of fun.

Want more pretend cooking ideas?

Add some saucepans and cutlery, some measuring cups and spoons.

a cake tin or muffin tray, mixing bowl. Plates to serve on!

Extra ingredients can be added by raiding your cupboard and looking for end of, near date or never to be used again things. nuts, flour, oats, seeds, cooked pasta or rice. Add shaving foam, hair gel, coloured spray always works well on shaving foam.

Number Hunt to Marbling Activity

Number Hunt Trail to a fun Marbling Experiment.

I started Dimples on a Number Hunt. He put on his hat & grabbed his bucket at the first arrow.

Yesterday while searching the bargain shops I came across a stick it note pad shaped as an arrow.

I started with 1 with a picture of a camera, so we grabbed One camera.

the follow was an arrow with the number 2 and a dinosaur on it, Dimples followed the direction of the arrow and came across 2 dinosaurs. He put them in his bucket.

then there was an arrow with the number 3 & a pictures of a car, he followed the arrow to 3 cars and put them in his bucket. Then there was a 4 with a stick looking thing on it :-? It was a pipe cleaner, so he followed it and found 4 pipe cleaners.

The trail led him outside where I had set up an experimental Marbling Activity, like the one we done previously experimental-marbling.
Next, an Arrow with 5 lizards leading to 5 toy lizards, 6 was knives and forks, which lead to a trail of plastic cutlery. Last was 7 with a picture of a marble which went to 7 marbles just under the table that was set up.

All the things in Dimples bucket were to be used as tools in the shaving cream tub.  I set out a tray filled with shaving cream, the paint/ink, glitter, a brush, a bucket of water (to wash excess cream off and for Dimples hands) and some paper.

First he sprinkled the glitter on and i sprinkled the ink, then he picked out some dinosaurs and lizards to trudge through the mass of cream, glitter and paint. then they walked across the paper.  The idea wasn't to put prints on the paper, this was just part of Dimples process- what he wanted to do.
The main idea was to mix around the colours before putting the paper face down in the tray to absorb the swirled ink. Just like we did in our experimental marbling.

It got messy very quickly, that's how we like it (& that's why we do a lot of our activities outdoors)
Next he used the cars to make a donuts/burn out rings. I sprinkled some more colours in it and Dimples made the cars make circular tracks.  Then the paper went face down and pressed down, then i scrapped the excess cream off the top of the paper with a card & what was left was a cool swirled pattern of ink.

Dimples tried out the forks and lightly manoeuvred them through the ink, then a rolling pin, a brush, then his fingers. Dinosaurs and cars were his favourite!

The best results came from having a dull base colour (mix one colour through all the shaving cream and smooth it all. Then using bright colours to sprinkle over the top. The mix these around a bit, but not too match that they blend. When you put your paper down, smooth it out from top down first to bottom so you have no air pockets that will leave big blank spots!

Then let it sit on it face up for a little while, less than a minute & scrape it off with cardboard of a plastic spatula or take away container lid.

with a pink background

swirls

with a grey background

Experimental Marbling

Marbling: Water, Oil or shaving cream?

I recently bought a small ink marbling kit for Dimples. We have experimented before with shaving cream marbling and food colour, I have tried to mix oil based paints and poster paint but have Failed in my marbling attempts.

So first up we tried the marbling as per the instructions, ink on water in a tray. If your marbling is ink it is recommended you put a dash of vinegar in the water, so we did this.

Dimples squirts his pick of colours in the water and uses a skew to stir and mix. Then we place the paper on top, you don't submerse it and there is no need to leave it there for long.

it worked OK. Not as bright as I would have liked.

Then we tried again with some oil in the water.

You can see this one worked better, the first ones were very light & vague in colour, you can see below where the oil dots formed.  Dimples was whisking the oil and trying to separate it while he was stirring the colours.

Then we moved on to Shaving cream, this worked the best by far.  I filled the tray with shaving cream and gave dimples the inks to choose his colours and squirt them around on the shaving cream.  I love shaving cream, its so versatile. We have done a few posts using shaving cream!

The colours always look so much more vibrant on it.

Then we used a fork to slice the colours and mix them a bit.

Then we placed the paper on top of it, flattened it down and pulled it off.

This part gets a little tricky so this is were Mummy's help is needed!  You need a piece of cardboard or something to whip off the shaving cream, once you clear it off your paper the ink marbling remains on your paper.

Magic.....  This use of the ink marbling gives you a more effective, brighter piece of art compared to the usual water and oil marbling.

And as usual, with shaving cream art leads to play, play leads to mess & Dimples feels the need to attack the dog & cover him in shaving cream also. FUN! The dog doesnt look very impressed...

Foam Bags to learn about Colour mixing & a Halloween treat

These Sensory Bags are great for learning the concept of colour mixing. We went one step further & turned them into Halloween Sensory bags

All you need is Shaving Cream/Foam, food dye & a Sealing Sandwich bag.

*Fill the bag from the bottom up with shaving cream, mush it around & get as much air out as possible.
*on a flat surface part down one side, this is where your first colour will go. We did Yellow
*Again, do the same on the opposite side & pour your next colour down, we used Red.
*Seal it & let your child mix the colours around. Gradually you will see the shades mixing. What colour do they make?

 They feel like a pillow to begin with, they are real puffy & filled. This is our colours to begin with.

 Mixing, moving, squishing, poking..............    wearing it on your head maybe? However you like to play with them will end up combining the colours!

There you have it, my little one learnt how red & yellow combine to make a bright Orange colour.  Because it is Halloween soon, we used the bright orange bag for a Halloween Sensory bag.

Carefully open one corner up & add some Black spiders, bats or snakes for Halloween. Make sure to push the foam down a little near your opening because the seal it bags wont work if they have the shaving cream in the sealing run.

Now you have a Spooky Halloween Sensory Bag.

We also did a big one with lots of colours, which made lots of different shades of green, pink, orange and it ended up looking like one big Rainbow Paddle pop inside (well i thought so,  i still feel like going to buy a rainbow paddle pop, YUM).

Making Colourful Clouds from shaving cream

Shaving cream & hair mousse, Sensory Play!

This is a messy fun activity for older kids who don't have sensitive skin allergies & who WONT put it in their mouths.

*All you need is some space, preferably outdoors or on a vinyl/tile floor, or at a glass table with something protecting the ground. Be careful where you situate it because it is bound to get flung, flicked and thrown somewhere (not good for carpeted areas).

*Shaving cream, an inexpensive can or/and Hair Mousse. Which you can pick up at the bargain shop for a couple of dollars.

*Food colour or dye watered down into spray cans, You can also use medicines droplets or similar.

We did our play in the yard as it was a nice sunny day & we had a bucket of water near so that my little man could wash of his hands if he didn't like the feel of it. Some children are tactile sensitive & this type of play would need encouragement to evoke their senses.
It teaches them about material, the mousse worked well & I explained to my boy how it expands as air gets on it.

We called our game, colouring the clouds & experimented with yellow, blue & purple sprays.

We also threw one bar of soap in the microwave for a minute & watched it puff out, expanding with air through it. You must be careful as it stays warm on the inside for a while but I thought this would be interesting to put in amongst our clouds as it has a different feel, it cools hard & can be crumbled. It didn't take the colours on as well though and really REALLY stunk out my microwave...

We used the top of a glass table & put our clouds on the smooth surface. My little one was too intrigued by the spray & had his cute face of thought on as he tried to work the different spray bottles in the right direction. This was a task in itself.

You can see in the picture that the blue worked worked well, then the yellow. Red would have been awesome but i had ran out, I already had a purple mixed up for when i dyed & made dinosaur eggs for him (that's another post for another day) so I just used that.
He had a ball, the colour mixing lasted a short while & then he was more interested in plopping, smearing and feeling the ''clouds".

At one stage the mini foxie came for a look & got covered in blue spray. My boy thought that was hilarious but the dog went & hid, just another reason for it to scam out new hiding holes until the 2 year is out of site.

& then the cloud play turned physical. He had a mass amount on his hands & flicked them up & down so it splatted every where, that was all good, then he cracked up laughing at me because a majority of it had landed on my head :) So then that started a new game, lets turn mummy into a big cloud & change her to blue.
It was a mild shaving cream fight until he slipped in it, then it became a rolling in the clouds game & so it went on until we were both a real mess, had loads of fun & needed to be washed ourselves.  On the plus side, it was scented shaving cream & smelt really nice.