Exploring Food Colouring!

Le Xin is beginning to explore colours now, solely based on the things she sees daily in her environment as well as the books that she read.

So I decided maybe I could introduce a simple activity about colours. This activity has nothing to do with the ability to identify. I am not at all trying to test her or anything, just purely enjoying the fun of exploring food colouring.

Firstly, I started off with laying the floor with newspaper so as not to dirty it. Next, I went on to introduce the food colouring to Le Xin. She was quite excited and started shaking the bottles.

Le Xin was actually quite curious to find out what Mummy was going to do with these bottles. Haha

I poured a little of blue, yellow and red food colouring into three plastic containers respectively and I was feeling quite puzzled why the yellow food colouring looks like orange when it was not diluted.

When I added a bit of water, Le Xin was amazed to see the changes. However, I was sad because the yellow food colouring still looks orange so I couldn't show her yellow.

She dipped a cotton bud into the food colouring and started observing the colour on the cotton bud.

I like how she dipped the cotton bud and started forming different strokes and dots.

After forming each stroke, she paused for a moment to look at her work, reviewing and planning what she should do next. As for me, it's always good to stay put as an owl - Observe Watch and Listen.

Time to apply the Pedagogy of Listening....

 Le Xin went on to use another medium, brush and drawing board, forming bigger and thicker strokes and she also tried to form circular marks with her brush.

Le Xin suggested to use a different brush. She lifted up her brush and gave it to me. Nah she said and then she took another brush to use.

After the end of this simple activity, both Le Xin and I had a big think and I suggested to make some food colouring bottles for exploration!

We went to the kitchen to look for bottles which we could recycle and found three empty plastic bottles which were used to store apple juice. Then I helped to put the food colouring into the bottles.

Is this what we will be working on?

Le Xin helped to pour in the water into each bottle and cap the cover!

I displayed the food colouring bottles that we made on her small red table as a provocation for learning and exploration.

And guess what?

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

|

V

She really went over to interact with them. Shaking the bottles and throwing them on the floor to hear the sound and looking through the bottles. Then I suddenly discovered something which I thought was quite interesting. I told her that if she looked at the wall from a certain angle, she could actually see the colours appearing on the wall. So she walked to the side and observed then I explain to her that's because the light is shining through thus forming the colours on the wall just like shadows. These bottles looks really nice at night when the light shines through just like lava lamps!

Do you like this simple activity? Now you know that a typical commercial colour chart is not necessarily the best thing to use to teach children about colours. Yes I agree it can help to provide a print rich environment but I personally feel that parents and educators should avoid testing their children/students deliberately just to find out if they can identify the colours. They will learn to do so naturally through fun and active exploration.