A Colourful Inquiry

Throughout the month of September the children were drawn to the big painting easel every day. We had large papers set up and tempra paint with big brushes for them to begin creating.

As we listened to them talk about the colours, we began to notice that some of the children were mixing colours and becoming excited about the new colours they were creating. We decided to set up some experiences for them to experiment with colour mixing.

Below is an invitation for the children to come to our newly created Art Atelier. This is where they will experiment with coloured water in the primary colours. They mixed the various colours to make new colours. Together we learned that Blue + Yellow = Green, Red + Blue = Purple, and Red + Yellow = Orange.

An invitation to mix colours in our Art Atelier

Red + Yellow = Orange

Red + Blue = Purple

Blue + Yellow = Green

The children also experimented with adding more of one colour to make lighter and darker versions of the secondary colours.





Then we gave them some cornstarch. This ended up in two discoveries. The children soon realized they could make very light and milky colours, however some also noticed the consistency change in the liquid. It became "goopy" "slimy", and "hard to mix".

"really light orange"

"look at all my greens"

"I like mixing the white powder - it's sticky!"

"I'm going to add lots of the white stuff - it's goopy"

"Look so light colours"

"I'm making pink and purple, and blue. All light"

Some of the children went back to the big painting easel later in the week to again experiment with colour mixing to create more colours for their paintings. This time they were specifically talking about how they were going to make the colours green, purple, and orange.

D.Z. made a picture of himself using only the primary colours.
He mixed some colours to create new ones.

"I like orange - yellow with red."

"Yellow and blue make it green."

Here's another friend who tried making pink
with her hands.

We are continuing to experiment with colours and see how when the primary colours mix together with various materials we can change them to new colours.

We have taken lots of pictures during this inquiry and the children have helped us create a document panel in the classroom within the Art Atelier. This documentation panel contains lots of the children's own writing explaining what they saw happening during the process. What a great way to have them write authentically. Please make sure to come and visit our new art space and read through the documentation. The students are very proud of their work.