While painting one of the children said, "This yellow is not very good, it's getting green,"
The teacher asked, " How did that happen?"
The child replied, "I think it touched the blue, 'cause yellow and blue make green."
The teacher then said, "I guess that's how we make new colours. What will happen if it touches red?"
The child said, "It will make orange."
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| "I mixed it lots and lots of times!" |
Experimenting with mixing colours continued and spread across the page. Soon the brush was not enough, and fingers became mixing tools as well. The colours kept changing...
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Teacher: "What colour was the water when you washed your hands?"
Child: "It was brown." |
Other children began experimenting with colour, using various techniques for mixing.
Some interesting brush strokes created all these beautiful colours.
The children painting at the table noticed the water change colour when they cleaned the brushes, and that they could control the colour the water became.
"Now I'm adding purple to make it purple."
"I mixed blue and green and I made turquoise. Mine was turquoise, now I'm trying to make it blue, so I have to use more blue."
Then some one asked, "Miss, can we paint our hands?"
The pictures that follow are of the children exploring the power of paint!
They started making prints on some small pieces of paper in the classroom.
They tried making hand prints with all the colours on the paint tray, then began mixing them to make new colours.
When that paper was full, we moved out into the hallway with a big piece of butcher paper and more paint.
The children were actively engaged in making hand prints, learning how to control the paint brush on their hands, and experimenting with how much paint was needed to make a good print.
Some children tried smearing the paint on the paper, which was a different feeling, and created a different effect on the paper.
These children are having great fun rapidly patting the paper with their hands. It was a wonderful tactile experience and made a lot of noise as well!
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| This picture shows how the mural is developing. The children especially enjoyed working on this piece of art together! |
After a while the focus shifted from simply making hand prints, to purposefully mixing the colours on their hands. At this point the children became very excited about the new colours they were making!
"I put blue and red and made purple."
"Oh, I'm gonna make purple too!"
"Look at my hand."
"It's sticky!"
"I made a yucky colour, I made brown."
The children began painting the backs of their hands and trying to make prints that way. It didn't work so well, but there was only one way to find that out!
"Can we have white?," one child asked. White was one colour we hadn't put on the tray yet.
When it was out, one child said, "This is gonna be cool!"
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| The mural changed as the children began smearing their hands into the paint. They were noticing how the colours changed when they did this. |
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"I mixed all the colours."
"This is awesome!!" |
September 22
Our interest in colour continues . . . Today we put out some pine cones and paint, thinking the children would have fun exploring with patterns and textures, but the children are still interested in mixing colours. All of the conversation around the painting table was about adding new colours to see what would happen. So that's just what we did!
One child said, "This is gonna be awesome! I love this!"
The pine cones were used more as mixing tools than painting tools. Then one boy ran and got some plastic spoons and brought them to the table.
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| "I know why the white is changing colour. Because of the red and the blue." |
Everyone wanted us to add black paint to the tray. "Put some black in it, it's gonna be black!"
Some children noticed the pattern made by the pine cones in the paint tray as they mixed the colours.
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| This was the finished product at the end of the day. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? |
