A fun colour mixing activities that is easy to do with young children is coffee filter art.
momstown's curriculum theme for the month of February is "Mix and Match". One of the colour mixing activities that is easy to do with young children is coffee filter art.
Materials:
- Coffee filter
- Washable markers
- Spray bottle with water
- White and coloured paper
Directions:
When a coffee filter is coloured with washable markers, and then lightly sprayed with water, you can watch as the marker colours separate, spread, and mix. The process is mesmerizing to watch, and is the perfect opportunity to discuss how primary colours can be combined to create new colours, and to demonstrate that secondary colours such as purple are the made up of primary colours.
Right before their eyes, kids can see red and yellow becoming orange, and green separating into yellow and blue. We used the coffee filter technique to create unique Valentines of our own this week, but we added a twist.
First we coloured our coffee filters, and then we sprayed them with water: We didn't stop there though. We took the damp coffee filters and pressed them face down onto plain white paper.
We waited for approximately 10 minutes (thank goodness for snacks and playtime), and then peeled off the coffee filters to reveal the beautiful prints that had been transferred onto the white paper.
Once the white paper was completely dry, we cut it into heart shapes, and glued the heart shapes onto blank cards to create custom coffee filter printed Valentine's cards.
Thanks to guest blogger momstown Calgary North for this hand-printed Valentine idea, that is also a lesson in colour theory!
