Making Paint with Spices and Berries

Summer is flying by us and it is hard to believe we did this project two weeks ago!

The children were set up with an invitation to make paints using turmeric, mulberries, tea and coffee. 

Before our art time fun began, some of the children helped collect the berries for our fun.

We first started by picking the berries, but many were too high, so in the end I shook the limbs of the tree and the berries rained down on the children.

Since we were not eating the berries, we had no problem gathering them from the ground to fill our container.

While the children played a little inside I set up little containers with the berries, tea, turmeric, and coffee.  I also set out some test tubes, funnels, a strainer, pipettes, and paint trays.

We first passed around the different items to see if the children could guess what was in each container.

This little guy was excited to let everyone know that it was coffee he was smelling

The one item that stumped everyone was the raspberry tea, but they enjoyed smelling and working with that one the best.

The children filled their test tubes with the items they wanted then added water and mixed them around to make a type of watercolor paint.

The berries they had to smash down in the tube with the pipette to get the colors release.  

After they made their watercolors they strained their concoctions into their paint trays. 

They actually made some wonderful colors that the children later painted with on watercolor envelops.