The topic of rainbows has been cropping up throughout the year. Sofia often wears her beloved rainbow colored pants, Magna-Tiles have been sorted to mix rainbowish patterns, Wikki Stix twisted into rainbow shapes and Violet even wears a rainbow in her hair. We have read the books “Mouse Paint” by Ellen Stoll Walsh and “Little Blue and Little Yellow” by Leo Lionni to discuss color mixing and last week we experimented with colors by dropping paint into different liquids. With our knowledge of color mixing and experimentation we wondered if we could create our own rainbow?
At meeting we asked the children what colors made up a rainbow.
Louis – Red, green and blue.
Parker – And orange.
Case – Blue, orange, yellow and green and maybe pink and white.
Julia – White is for clouds.
Elliott – Red, orange, green, yellow and blue.
Violet – And pink.
Louis – There’s no pink.
Wes – No pink – I saw a rainbow that had no pink.
Tait – I was on a plane and saw a rainbow. It was beautiful. Purple, blue, red and orange.
Jonah – Just like Violet’s bow.
Equipped with the following materials:
Red, blue and yellow water color paints
Eyedroppers
Empty cups
Paper towels
Water
We set about creating our own Studio Yellow rainbow. How would we create all the rainbow colors when we only had three different colored paints?
First we measured equal amounts of water into four cups.
We then mixed paint into the water and created two red cups, one yellow and one blue.
After the paint was mixed we folded paper towels into rainbow shapes.
Lining up our four colored waters separated by three empty jars we carefully added our paper rainbows.
As the morning went by the children commented on the changing colors.
Elliott – That paper is turning red and that one is turning blue.
Wes – This is turning red too.
Any ideas what is going to happen to the rest of the paper?
Elliott – The paper is going to dry.
Wes – I see pink on the side of the red.
Jonah – The paper is all turning – but we have two yellow and one turning purple.
Parker – Look what’s happening. It’s (color) going into there and there and there.
Alex – Now they are color napkins!
Parker – I wonder how they do that?
Revisiting the experiment later:
Elliott – That cup is going to be green. It’s going to dry and and green is going in that one.
Where is the green coming from?
Elliott – From a bottle of green paint.
But we have no green paint. I wonder is there a way we could make green?
Alex – Yellow and blue = green.
The following day:
Case – We got green.
Parker – We mixed the colors.
Violet – Yellow and blue made green.
Elliott – There are two reds.
Wes – It’s making dark blue.
Violet – It’s making light blue.
Case – Yellow is mixing up orange and orange is mixing up with yellow.
Louis – Red is turning into strawberries and blue is turning into blueberries.
Case – Yellow is turning into a clementine.
Is it starting to look more like a rainbow?
