A Little Green

 
Our Color Mixing Project continues to excite us at Art and Soul Preschool.
As it is that time of year when green becomes more than a color; it becomes an emotion, 
a season, a holiday, and a memory to hold onto, it was only fitting that we chose it as our color this week to focus in on.

During Color Mixing Lab, the children were given blue and yellow colored water and were 

invited to make as many different colors of green that they felt they could.

The magic of watching two colors mix into a new color never gets old, it continues to excite and reinforce previous learning on color mixing, as well as elicit such responses as:

"I made green out of blue."-M.N.
"Look I made blue-green!"-E.P.H.
"This is teal blue, and look Mommy, I made Tore quse!"-E.P.B.
"Do you mean turquoise?" -D.P.
"Yes, and I also made bluish, blueberry, bluish, bluish!" -E.P.B.
"This is dark, silly kitty, dark golf ball, green grass with gumdrops in the middle." -J.P.
"Wow, that is a long name." D.P.
"It's just the color green it is."-J.P.
"Wow, Greeeeeen!!!."-O.R.
"I like green."-S.G.
"Yeah, green, green, green."-M.N.

A small sample of a typical color mixing experiment conversation, it is the names they give their colors that I think I enjoy the most.

Perhaps it is because I love their names so much, I took out paint samples and we looked at several different shades and colors of green. I read out what the paint companies name their greens, for some reason "greenbelt" got the most laughs.

 After we looked at the samples, the students were then given pallets of paint with yellow, blue, and white, and were again invited to mix as many different colors of green as they thought they could.

I love this exercise for many reasons. The children are learning how to create different colors, they are not merely relying on the color that comes from a paint tube, they themselves are making the color they want.  They are learning paint has different values and properties, and they are expanding their idea of a general concept; they know what green is, but as they mix, they are observing that there is not just one notion of green, there are many.  

  

It was interesting to see that my 4 and 5 year olds made color swatches similar to the sample cards, and that the 3 year olds did not do swatches, but they still created a painting that showed all their different variations of the color green.

Look at all those unique versions of green!

After they finished their paint mixing, we sat together and wrote down the names for the their colors.  They were numerous and diverse and will hopefully be displayed when we do our documentation board for our color mixing project.

Color Mixing With Cornstarch

Our Color Mixing Project moves ahead full force.  Thursday we started our color mixing with an invitation to mix colored water.

Again the children were set up with the primary colors, a clear egg carton tray, and  a pipette for mixing.

Although we have mixed with food colored water many times, when I set it up a little different, I notice they explore with the colors differently.  For example, when we use the test tubes, they tend to use one or two colors, but with this mixing, they seemed to enjoy mixing all three at once.  I am always curious where they will take their experience. 

They are becoming experts at telling me what the secondary colors are as they mix them.

Purple, green and orange have become the magic colors as they emerge.

I was informed the other day that the technique shown above of putting the color in the pipette, then letting it drop to the bottom is called "surfing the color."   I thought it was a perfect term for what he was doing.  It is usually accompanied with a little verse; "surf it, squeeze it, put it in your cup."

After the children color mixed for some time, they were then given a tray of cornstarch to do some more color mixing, and to see their colors become more vibrant as they were added to the white of the powder.

Many wonderful things happen when you add cornstarch and water, but two that I was hoping the children would notice is that when colored water is added to cornstarch it starts to separate out the mixed colors.  So purple begins to separate into red and blue again.   It is something you have to watch for, and catch before too much of the water is added, but I did notice it when the kids first started.  However, the next aspect of discovery was what held their attention more.  Water and cornstarch make Oobleck, a wonderful sensory experiment that gets its name from the Dr, Seuss book.    

 Oobleck is something you have to dive into with your hands.  It is this marvelous substance that is both liquid and solid at the same time.  The kids love it!

Next week is Dr. Seuss's Birthday so I think we will be doing some more Oobleck discovery and color mixing.

An Invitation to Make Paint

For several months now we have been exploring color mixing.

I think it has officially become our school "project."  I am inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach, and one of the things that this approach to Early Childhood emphasizes is project work.  This is a broad concept, but one of the key components that I understand is that it is something that the children have a deep interest in, and that the teacher facilitates their learning by giving many provocations in which they can explore the topic from different perspectives and modalities of learning.  It is through this exploration and experimentation that children learn to love research and discovery because they are the initiators in the process.  To view previous posts on our Color Mixing Project, look it up in the Projects and Fun column.

With the hope to continue with our color mixing project, today the children were offer  a provocation to mix their own paints from scratch.

Each child received a tray with three empty clear jars with a stir stick in them, a small cup of cornstarch, a cup of water, a container each of the three primary colors in powdered tempera paint, a spoon and a pipette for their water and mixing.

Many of the kids watched as I set up the project, and some lent a helping hand, their excitement to start was hard for them to contain, always a good sign!

After a brief talk about using the cornstarch to thicken their paint and water to help mix it all together, they were off and creating.

One of the things to keep in mind when the children do this project is that when they get a color they love, cap it and have them name it, because they will keep mixing and the colors inevitably all come out brown.  However this is also part of the learning process, so I tried to cap two of their colors before they over mixed, but watched them as they mixed all the colors and the rest of their materials and waited till I heard names like "brown-a licious", "brown-brown," and "mud" and knew they were reaching the final stages of their experiments because all their materials were used up.

Here are the names I documented on their jars:

E.P.B.- "Pink-a-licious, Purple-licious, Mud."

H.S.-"Henry-licious, Yellowish, Brown-a-licious."

E.P.H.-"Redish-Pink, Feather Green, Little Green."

K.S.-"Cherry Jam, Purple!, and Purple!"

E.M.-"Blueberry, Cherry, Brown-a-licious (a popular color)"

J.D.-"Purple, Brown-Brown, and White (she took the simple approach, and the white was green, I love it)"

M.N.- "Feather Green, Fatter Green, Potter Green." ( He liked his greens!)

They of course painted with their paints afterwards.  More to come...

Color Mixing Lab the Next Phase: Studying Acids and Bases

Color mixing has become our big project at school.  If you have been following these posts you know we first started with several weeks of simple color mixing using water and food coloring.  The children were fascinated with the mixing of different colors.  We then experimented with adding our colored water to snow.  

The last week and a half we have been watching as our colors fizzed with baking soda and vinegar, so what next?  Well, why not some more experiments.  I boiled some purple cabbage and ended up with 4 cups of dark purple liquid.  The next day at school I put the cabbage juice in one of their tray compartments, and lemon juice and baking soda water in two other compartments.  The invitation was put out for exploration, lets see what happened.    

This student is pointing out to his friend that when the baking soda was added to the "purple water" the mixture began to turn blue.

Here we see what happened when the lemon juice was added to the cabbage juice, it began to turn pink.

 

Here we see a young scientist turning a blue mixture back to it's original purple by reversing the results  first baking soda, and then lots of lemon juice to turn it back.

When the children began asking why the colors were changing, I explained to them that lemon juice is what we call an acid and baking soda is what we call a base, the cabbage juice is neutral.  I asked them which one turns the cabbage juice from purple to pink and light purple, most told me the lemon juice.  So we talked about acids must then make things lighter.  I asked which made it turn turquoise and dark blue, and they said the water...which was water with baking soda, and we said that bases turn the color darker.

 

Each time the color changed,they were in awe, it was like magic because both the baking soda water and lemon juice are fairly clear, so the fact that they were mixing the colors was really exciting.

Trying at small amounts of liquid  had quicker results  as the little researcher in the photo above found out.  Another student in the picture below noticed that when she added her baking soda water first, the color changed on top but not on the bottom.

We had all sorts of variations of the three colors and questions and theories.  It was a lot of fun, but also a great way to approach science and the art of color mixing in one.

I can't wait to see what will be next in this color mixing journey!

Color Mixing Lab II

An Invitation to Explore How Color, Water, Vinegar, Snow, and Baking Soda React in Our "Color Mixing Lab."



For the last two weeks we have been experimenting a lot in our lab.

I have a set of test tubes I purchased from Amazon, and in a previous post we named it

"Color Mixing Lab."

So far most of our explorations have been using different colored waters in test tubes to make new colors, or potions.

When we came back to school after break, we had snow, so I filled their test tubes with snow.

First we did our color mixing the way we usually do, and then I asked them to observe what happens when they add their colors to the snow.

What they were discovering was that while the colors in the water mix right away, they take time mixing when in the snow, and they were able to make "rainbow tubes."

They then had a ball coloring the bowl of snow with their left over colored water.

On Another day I set up a new invitation to investigate color mixing.

This time they had a tray with tubes of baking soda, and in two of the compartments of the tray I put vinegar and in one I put water.  Let the fun begin!

The children first picked the colors they wanted to add to their different liquids, at this point in time they didn't know that they were different types of liquid.

As their tubes started to fizz and bubble, they soon realized something was different.

We have played with baking soda and vinegar a lot, so once they saw the reaction, they knew what it was, but holding it in a test tube was the most fun I think they have had doing this experiment.



They also started to notice that one of the colors they would use would not fizz, this was the tray compartment that had the water, so they started making their own conclusions about water not fizzing in baking soda, just the vinegar.

The magic and wonderment of their fun is clear on their faces!

Continuing through the week, we did more experimenting.  This invitation was to see how both the baking soda and the snow react to their color mixing.

The joy and the sharing are wonderful to see.

 Young scientist at work

Similar conclusions were made, water in baking soda does not fizz, vinegar in snow does not fizz, just the vinegar in the baking soda.

And to add to the fun, they then dumped all their experiments into the bowl of snow to see what happens.  I am excited to see what next will happen next week!

Responses from the children:

"It's like magic." MN
"Oh it's so pretty...look, look, it is bubbling." EP-B
"We are making adult drinks, mine is fizzy root beer."-JP
"Look, look it is changing colors."-SG
"It's fizzle hot."-MN
"Woo, I made the cap fly off, he, he." -EM
"It's poison ivy drink.
"This is called Red, Pepper, Boo, Boo." -JP