Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Unplugged Project--color

There is a website that hosts an "unplugged" project every week and this weeks project is color. We haven't participated in this before, but we had such fun joining in the Operation Playtime activities I thought we would join in this weekly fun also.I have seen this activity done for mess-free finger painting, but I thought it would also be a good way to show color mixing.
We started with the same base we use for homemade fingerpaint.
1/3 c. sugar
1 c. corn starch
4 c. water
Mix these ingredients together and then cook on low heat until thick. Stirring constantly.
Let cool.
When this was cool we divided this mixture into 3 bowls and added red, blue, and yellow food coloring.

mix, mix, mix

Mark finished off the mixing to make sure the colors were well blended.

I placed a big spoonful of each of the three colors into a ziplock bag. I then sealed the bag with packing tape (or you can use duct tape).

I showed the kids how to carefully blend the colors to make new colors. This kept them busy for a quite a while. (A very good thing.) It is a real neat feeling pushing the colors around in the bags.

Of course, it wouldn't be real fun if it didn't involve a little silliness.

We practiced writing letters and shapes in our paint. You can see above how cool the blending becomes after you work with it for a while. Our littlest learners also picked out and named colors as we did this activity.

Of course, if you are nine years old, and are really, really good at blending we discovered you get the color brown.

Hands on learning is definitely the best.

Make sure you go and visit all the great color activities at this weeks Unplugged website.

10 comments:

Rhonda said...

Very cool. I liked the brown handprint one. :0)

Crescent Moon said...

What a way to practice writing letters! I really like that it squishy, but not messy.

Unknown said...

Very cool activity. I will have to try it.

naomi said...

That's so pretty, thanks for the recipe!

Sherry Gann said...

Great activity!! We're definitely going to do this for some fun letter writing. :)

Anonymous said...

great stuff! we love rainbow stew!!!

Erica said...

Oh yeah, we can do this! What a great idea and a great way to practice writing!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the Finger Paint Base recipe. Your project was a great success.

So Smrt said...

Ohhhh. Nice! Welcome to the Unplugged project!

Amelia @ Needles & Bows said...

Love how these turned out! My daughter and I did something similar but with a lot less paint and a piece of paper instead. Gonna have to try this one out though! I featured your idea on my blog post: http://www.needlesandbows.com/2013/10/mess-free-finger-painting/