Often as educators we set out provocations in hopes that the students will use it in a certain way. It aways amazes me that so often as you let play unfold with out interruption from an adult it can take a completely different direction that is equally important and meaningful to the children at that particular time.
At the water table we set out some jugs and measuring cups for them to explore with. With this provocation, we had intended for the students do some measuring and predicting but as we listened to their discussions, we discovered that they activity had taken a totally different direction.
Z.R. “Hey look, the water turned green!”
L.C. “because you put it in the yellow one. Blue and Yellow make green.”
Z.R. “It’s back to blue when it’s in a white container.”
As I continued to listen to their conversations I realized that this group of students knew a great deal about colour mixing. I read the book “Mouse Paint” to see if we could spark discussion about colours and engage other children in a conversation about colour mixing.
Later that week we set out a painting activity hoping that the students would do some patterning. To my surprise it turned into another colour mixing experiment.
Here, one of the girls drags her finger across the foil to mix the different colours together. She really wanted to make purple and figured out that she could do that by mixing red and blue.
My partner and I then decided to read the book “Mix It Up” to take their interest a little further and talk about shades.
Using the primary colours, the children mixed the paint to create their own shades. Once they found a colour they liked they used a Q-tip to fill in a circle on the sheet. The children created many colours and shades and then named them when they were done. As you can imagine they came up with some pretty funny names for their colours!
Our next experiment with colour will be dying our own wooden cubes using liquid water colour. Our hope is to create a rainbow of coloured cubes to explore with in the Hands on Learning area.
How have you experimented with colour in your home or classroom?
The Kinder Class 