Exploring Colour – Ziplock Bag

J loves colours – he knows the names of his basic colours, and is 100% accurate at naming them unless it’s a shady area like turquoise he can’t decide whether it’s turquoise, blue or green but neither can I so we’re fine with that. But recently he’s started to notice as he’s mixing what I saw called on another blog “Preschool brown” that other colours are made in the process of getting to that point. So taking note of his interest I decided to explore this with him and our first exploration is with a ziplock bag.

I had seen ziplock bags used on a number of different blogs but remember reading on Mama Smiles about wanting to use it to explore colour mixing and as I had added some ziplock bags to my shopping at the weekend this seemed a perfect opportunity to do it.

What you need

A ziplock bag
Some Tape
2 primary colours of paint – I used blue and yellow (J’s favourite colour at the moment is green)

How the fun happens

Opening the ziplock bag I poured blue paint into 1 of the bottom corner and yellow in the opposite corner. I then carefully squeezed the air out of the bag – I say carefully as the first time I did it I didn’t do it carefully and covered the kitchen surfaces with blue and yellow paint.

To make sure that no little toddler fingers got into the bag and emptied the contents everywhere I then taped up the top of the bag although I think I’ve seen this done with hot glue as well (which we haven’t got) which makes the seal more permanent.

I then handed J the bag and watched him explore it. He first used his hands and then asked for a crayon and wanted to draw on it. When he started to notice the colours merging in the middle the look of wonder on his face was great that he realised he had made Green.

I’ve kept the bag and now that it is all green I am able to bring it out as I prepare dinner and he likes making marks in the bag drawing circles and faces as well as asking Rainy Day Dad to draw him a caterpillar.