creating | Kelly St. Scientists

I thought we could continue to explore colour as the children were so entranced with the colours mixing rather than dancing during the magic milk experiment.

I had intended on using the squirty bottles to make a mist for us to attempt to reflect light on and make rainbows but our inquisitive and curious scientists were so taken with the squirty bottles it seemed wrong not to let them freely explore colours using the sprays as they wished. So I added red, yellow and blue water to the bottles as well as the test tubes.

Daniel had to coordinate his movements and use his hand muscles to fill the test tube using the squirty bottle. He mixed yellow and blue and made green!

It was hard to make out the colours that were being mixed in the test tubes however,

“I made black!” – Natalie

So I fetched a big bit of paper for us to spray the colours on to.

“It’s not black it’s a bluey green!” – Natalie

“I made it orange by doing 2 colours at the same time!” – Gabi

“Look it’s changing red – it’s mixing orange!” – Belle

Natalie, Daniel and Tommy each sprayed a different colour at the paper to see what colours they could make.

But the paper got soggy and absorbed the spilled water in the tray making the colours tricky to make out. So we added a shelf from the drying rack and it worked a treat!

Persevering with the tricky wee vaporizers – having to use strong finger muscles.

We talked to one another about what the colours that we made.

The paper got really soggy and tore easily after we soaked it with the colours.

Sometimes we had to mix the colours a little with our fingers.

We had to be coordinated to shoot the colour where we wanted.

It lookedlike a big palette of colours that we had made!

We sprayed lots of red and yellow to make bright warm colours. The paper felt very wet and thin.

Finlay tried 2 colours at once! He had to use coordination and both sides of his brain to spray both at the same place!

Finn made orange by adding yellow to the red.

Isla helped Lauren fill the tube with yellow – great team work!!

Caoimhe had to be quick and coordinated to catch the water dripping off the paper.

We had to use our hand muscles and coordination to spray the colour out of the bottles and on to the paper or the tray. We made a range of colours and talked about what we had created. We remembered which colours we had added and attempted to remake purples, oranges and greens although often ended up with browns.

Patrick and An were sure they had created more than just colours…

” I made dynamic soda! It powers rockets!! – Patrick

“It’s a samurai colour!” “It’s sacorizing! (It’s like a decorated surprize!)” – An

We had to take turns for the bottles and work together, developing our social skills.

“Yes! You CAN help me!” – An to Lauren

We also had to solve problems when things didn’t work as we’d hoped like the wee vapourizers being stiff, the bottles stopping working or when we set ourselves the challenge of filling the test tubes using the bottles. We compared amounts to see who had the most and the least, using lots of comparative language.

“I’ve got many!” – Adam

Amy realised that she could fill the test tube using the big squirty bottle.

We used those pincer grip movements to work the pipettes to mix colours in the test tubes.

Jayden watched the others and worked hard to be abole to use the wee blue vapourizer.

Adam focused on filling test tubes with the squirty bottles. He liked getting them full to the brim before tipping them out and starting again.

Zara exercised those important pincer movements and finger muscles to fill the test tubes with the pipettes.

James had to concentrate so as not to spill any colour.

Working together to solve tricky problems.

Some of the colours didn’t mix straight away so we had to solve the problem of how to get them to mix.

Broghan added red to her yellow and it didn’t mix- it looked like a cocktail! She had to give it a shake to make orange.

Zara’s blue and yellow didn’t mix completely!

Finlay added red to his yellow and made orange but it didn’t mix properly!

So we shook them (with the top covered of course!)

“Shake shake shake tomato!” sang Evie

Evie enjoyed mixing colours by shaking. She created a little song and wiggle dance to help mixing!

The shaking (and singing!) did the trick and the colours mixed well.

"Look at my green!" — “Look at my green!”

I don’t think we have exhausted the exploration of colour mixing. I think on Wed we shall revisit the learning and experience again but this time with coffee filters to see what happens to the colours with them.

And who knows maybe we’ll get on to rainbows, but then maybe we’ll explore another area altogether.

"Oh I made brown - do you think this would make a penny shiny?" — “Oh I made brown – do you think this would make a penny shiny?”

After all Patrick did mention the cleaning properties of Coke! Hmmmmm……

Science blog from the children and staff of Kelly St. Children's Centre.