Art - Mixing Colors

One of the great things about art is seeing things change and interact. (It is also part of the fun in Science and cooking.) The simplest form of this is finger painting with two different colors. I let each kid choose one color and then they got to use both.

 She selected white, which was her favorite color for more than a year. He selected blue, but his favorite color changes daily.

You can see a difference in technique. While she uses her entire palms, he uses fingers and knuckles. They both enjoyed mixing the colors.

Here you see bread, colored milk, and clean paintbrushes. They simply paint the bread and once finished, it is toasted for a colorful snack.

They both use the two handed painting technique and only mixed colors minimally. This is great for a new painting experience though.

Here's another great color mixing activity. It's just colored water and then let them loose to paint the sidewalk.When they are finished, hose off the area and there is no permanent stain. It's difficult to see the colors in the photo, but they could clearly see where it was yellow, red, blue, and green. Also, our sidewalk isn't flat, so if I would have put more thought into this I would have had them sit at the top of the slant. As it was they both ended up sitting in the water and making a huge mess. It was fun and their clothes didn't stain. This is a great activity for when it's hot outside (they are in the shade).

A non-art discovery was made by my son around the same time. He came to me holding a magnet toy. I love this toy because even though it has small parts, they cannot get to any of them! They can't swallow the magnet and each item is contained so it is safe for younger kids.

Sweet Son: "Maanet boken?" (magnet broken)
Me: "The magnet isn't broken."
Sweet Son: "No pick up beans. Maanet boken."

This was the start to a conversation of what make something magnetic or not. :) If I had tried introducing this concept to him, he wouldn't have had any interest at all, but because he made the discovery and I was able to help him make sense of it, he was interested and learned about magnets.