create (with kids): color mixing

Well, friends, we officially have a walker on our hands. Little Billy has decided to try, once again, to keep up with big sister. I knew crawling would only placate him for so long. That even though Isia avoided walking until fourteen months, that he would probably be walking by a year. I thought our recent week-long lake vacation, with fascinating new things like sand and water, might buy us some time- but he insisted on practicing his "cruising" when he wasn't busy exploring everything else. And all that practicing paid off in his first step today, followed by a second step tonight. Walking is just around the corner... which means that life with two just got more interesting. Do you know what else is interesting?

Playing with colored water! We started with three large plastic containers, several small containers, a pitcher of clean water, food coloring, and a smock. First we filled up the large containers with water and made one yellow, one blue, and the last one red. I tried to explain to her that these are the primary colors and that all of the colors of our world are derived from them and their infinite combinations. She was much more interested in pouring and mixing. Fair enough. 

We started with adding little bits of red water to a smaller container of our yellow water. As with all color mixing, you want to add a little bit of the darker color to the lighter color. It will take very little red to make yellow turn orange, but it will take lots and lots of yellow to have the same effect on red. 

 

Then we moved on to adding blue to yellow to make... "GREEN!" she exclaimed. She enjoyed her new green color a lot. So much in fact, that we stopped in the midst of our experimenting to enjoy a few cups of green "tea". 

 We made purple next by adding blue to the red. I always find purple to be a difficult color to mix, because it rarely turns into the "crayon purple" we're so familiar with. But it was close enough to work for us, especially when seen on a shiny metal spoon.

Last, but not least, I asked her to combine all of her newly mixed secondary colors- her orange, green, and purple- to see what color they turned into. (A lovely brown!) Then she continued to mix and pour to her heart's delight, before finally giving our plants a well-deserved drink. It was a good morning's worth of experimenting, and one of our last few, I think, before a walking, toddling little brother wants to join in the fun. Yes, life with two kids is going to be interesting, indeed!