I have a three yo (almost four!) son who is smart as a whip. It seems like he’s always known his letters and numbers etc. His latest trick is asking about colors. “Daddy, what color do blue and green make?” "Daddy what color do black and white make? (this one is really popular). I have to say that I am woefully unprepared to answer such questions. I have to struggle to remember what the three primary colors are.
My bought water paints so that she could tell him to find out for himself. Now, being particular about getting messy and also lazy, I would like something that doesn’t require such a cleanup effort. I’m thinking of something light based. And it should have a chart or something to explain it all to me, too, so ol’ Dad can have all the answers. I’ve found a few good websites but I was hoping to have something separate fromt the computer as well.
You are going to have a heck of a lot of color-theory to explain if you use a light-based medium to teach color blending. Primaries and secondaries are different for light (which is additive) and pigment (which is subtractive). That’s why graphics software gives you RGB (red, green, blue) for things that are going to be displayed on a monitor and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black - basically blue, red and yellow, the pigment primaries) for print designated work.
Paints really are your best bet. If you don’t like the clean up, sit him in the bathtub in the nude and just hose him down afterwards. Come to think of it, scrubbing that tub will be a bigger chore than cleaning up an art area. Newspaper is your friend. Lay lots of it down and toss it out afterwards. The clothes and the kid will have to be cleaned no matter what he’s spent the day doing.
Play-Doh? It’s been a while, but I remember getting great joy out of mixing Play-Doh colors. I also remember, however, that this endeavor generally ends up large blobs of sorta gross colored Play-Doh. I think, however, that’s mostly the result of mixing all the colors. It does, on the other hand, have it’s own set of clean-up issues.
Blobs of paint squirted into ziplock bags.Then let him squish away! You can do this with coloured Jello too, then snip off the corner of the bag and eat your creation!
oil pastels are another good (if potentially disastrous to your carpet) option, and I’ll second the play-doh/modelling clay idea!
hmmm… i know there are bubble bath paints that come in red yellow and blue, i’m not sure how well they would really blend, but can’t think of a less messy way to go.
Do note Sparrowhawk’s comments about additive and subtractive light and color. You might want to check out your library for Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green. (You don’t need to read the whole book, but the intro chapters give a good account of the problems with “mixing” colors.)
Alternatively, drop “color additive subtractive” into Google and see if there are any kid-friendly sites.
(I did not spot any on a quick search, but the following may help you get an understanding that you can translate:
I found the easiest thing to do with my son (who is also 3, almost 4) is to fill up little cups with water and add food colouring to them. He can then use little droppers to pick up the coloured water and mix them together in a white egg carton. The colours blend really nicely together.
samalama, that sounds like a great idea! I like the potential for less cleanup the most, but I also think the color results would be fairly immediate too. Which is good because what three year old has any sense of time?
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He asks what time it is a lot now. One of the first times he asked his mother, she answered “five thirty”, and he asked “Waht does that mean?” I think that’s geat.
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Yes, yes, Play-Doh! That’s how I learned. I was really shocked at how many kids in my high-school Basic Art class did not know how to mix colors. They must not have played with Play-Doh as children.
Home-made play dough:
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons oil
Mix the dry ingredients in a medium pan, then add the water and oil over medium heat. Stir well till it all comes together in a lump. Reduce the heat if needed. Remove from the heat, and dump into a large (gallon-size) Ziploc bag. Knead well. It will still be hot, so be careful.
You can add food coloring or an envelope of unsweetend Kool-Aid for color and to make it smell good. It’s also edible (well, non-toxic) if Junior decides to take a bite.
I teach nursery school and this is what we use all the time. If it gets dry, you can add a little water to moisten it back up. Keep it in a Ziploc bag or a Tupperware-type container and it’ll keep for weeks.
We start with red and blue to make purple, red and yellow to make orange, blue and yellow to make green… and so on. Read the back of the food coloring box and get really creative with the colors.
