Wednesday, June 1, 2016

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Preschool Rainbow Fish Color Mixing Experiment

Preschool, paint, colors, rainbow fish, and more...this activity looked like so much fun that my older kids wanted to join my 3-year old in her "work!"



My youngest preschooler has a favorite color: purple.  She loves it!  She loves everything about it, and she loves to color everything purple possible.  If she absolutely cannot have purple, then her second favorite color, pink, will do.  Pink is a wonderful color too.  She has created something of a heirarchy of colors:

Purple = Best color ever created.  Everything should be purple.
Pink = 2nd best color ever.  Everything not purple should be pink.
All the other colors = Useful for making rainbows.

She enjoys mixing colors, especially purple...in fact, she was barely two when she discovered you could make purple by mixing red and blue OR pink and blue!

She can tell you all about making purple, but I thought it would be good for her to see some of the other tones, shades, and colors that you can make with only the three basic primary colors.  This activity became a book-based color experiment!  (The entire activity was inspired by our Virtual Book Club...more on that below!)

To start with, I gave her an egg carton divider, and added red, yellow, blue, and white to all the pockets.  You could do this with a smaller egg carton, or even just a piece of cardboard--the colors do not need their own pockets, though it is quite fun!



I handed her a paintbrush, cup of water, and a paper towel.  Sometimes she likes to rinse and dry her brush in between mixing.  Sometimes she doesn't.  She got right to work!



She had such a great time experimenting with creating different colors that at this point I had to set up color mixing palettes for all my other kiddos!  Despite knowing exactly which colors make what, they wanted to mix too!

Bonus: we used recycled materials for our color mixing and fish-making!



While they mixed, I cut a paper plate out to look like a simple fish.  This is super easy...just cut like the picture above.  When the kids were ready, they painted their fish with their rainbow set of paints!  We added sparkles (glitter), and an eye (or two) and were all set!  The fish had to dry, and the we hung them up!







This activity was inspired by this month's Virtual Book Club book: The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister.

Amazon Affiliate Link:



You will love all the fun and educational ideas the Virtual Book Club hosts have put together to go with The Rainbow Fish!  You could build a whole unit around it!

Easy & Colorful Name Puzzle :: Toddler Approved

Rainbow Fish Scratch Art :: Sugar, Spice and Glitter

Rainbow Fish Sugar Cookies :: Rainy Day Mum


Rainbow Fish Note Cards :: Growing Book by Book


Rainbow Fish Alphabet Matching Craft :: I Can Teach My Child


To learn more about the Virtual Book Club, click here and join us on the Virtual Book Club Facebook Page!




I may share at any of these parties!



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