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7 min read
Colour mixing activities are a fun, hands-on way to teach children how primary colours turn into secondary colours.
Colour mixing also helps children understand:
Below are 7 colour mixing activities you can do at home, ranging from mess-free (a printable) to paint mixing.
Materials:
Purpose: To explore the chromatic sense, learning to perceive difference between primary and secondary colours and the gradations of each while also developing/strengthening fine motor skills.
How To Do The Activity:
Notes:
Materials:
Purpose: To explore the chromatic sense and develop/strengthen the fine motor skills. It’s also an opportunity for creative expression.
How To Do The Activity:
Notes:
This is an outdoor activity because of potential mess. In the winter you can do this on the snow and in the other months you can use paper outside or an old white sheet to make a giant mural.
Materials:
Purpose: To explore the chromatic sense and develop fine and gross motor skills. Spray bottles are GREAT for developing fine motor skills.
How To Do The Activity:
Materials:
Purpose: To explore the chromatic sense and develop gross motor skills.
How To Do The Activity:
We tend to discourage children from mixing different colours of playdough together but it’s a great learning opportunity. You just need to provide them with the right colours to avoid it becoming a brown blob.
Materials:
Purpose: To explore the chromatic sense and strengthen the hands. Working with play dough is AMAZING for fine motor skills.
How To Do The Activity:
Notes:
Note that this is an activity you will need to prep ahead of time.
Materials:
Purpose: To explore the chromatic sense and develop observation skills. This is also a good opportunity to learn about the science behind changes in the states of water at different temperatures (i.e. it's frozen when it's cold and liquid when it's warm).
How To Do The Activity:
This printable is a great way to explore colour mixing but note that your child should learn about colour mixing in a hands-on way first, otherwise this will likely be too complicated for them.
Materials:
Purpose: to explore colour mixing and understanding of the difference between primary and secondary colours.
How To Do The Activity:
Simplified Version:
2. The adult fills in the primary colours on the left side of the printable. The child adds the correct secondary colour on the right side of the equal sign.
Blue circle + yellow circle = Empty circle
Red circle + yellow circle = Empty circle
Blue circle + red circle = Empty
More Challenging Version:
2. Leave all three circles empty for your child to complete the combinations on page 1. You can provide your child with page 3 to check their work after.
Notes:
For MESS-FREE colour mixing materials, check out the products available in our shop:
For even more colour mixing activities, check out last year's post, 5 Science Experiments You Can Do With Your Toddler.
Three of the experiments in this post are great for exploration of colour mixing:
With all these activities above, once the child has an understanding (and is able to recognize/identify) the primary and secondary colours, you can move on to tertiary colours - Tertiary Colours: Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Violet, Red-Violet, which are formed by mixing a primary with a secondary.
If you want to explore different gradations of the primary and secondary colours, you could also add white to the playdough and paint activities.
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