Even though Anna knows her colors and a couple of the color mixes, I thought it would be fun to have her do a little “experiment” so she can see exactly what happens when we combine two colors. When I first set up the glasses and mixed the food coloring into the water she was pretty excited and very intrigued. She wasn’t quite sure what we were going to do.

I gave her a piece of paper with 6 circles on it and labeled the paper “Color Wheel.”  I had her color in the first three circles to match the colors in the glasses and then attempted to explain about primary colors and how those three colors are used to create every other color out there (except for the grayscale colors).

Then we mixed the first two colors of her choice, BLUE:

…and YELLOW:

Seriously, the look on her face was awesome.  She was completely amazed that these two colors mixed together would turn green like that.  It was like magic to her.

After that I had her color in green on her color wheel between her yellow and blue circles.  The next colors she chose to mix were red and yellow.  These didn’t work so great because I think the red was a little overpowering.  It was just light enough though that Anna saw that they created orange (which is one she already knew).

Orange was colored in on the color wheel.

She then mixed the last two colors: red and blue…

…and she promptly stated, “Look Mommy! Red and blue make black!”  Hmm..  It was a little dark.   I think my blue was too blue maybe?  I’m not sure.  I held it up to the light and she said, “Oh. It’s dark purple!” So those two colors didn’t work so great either.  I’m glad we started with the green though since that one turned out perfect.

She then finished her color wheel and VOILA! She now knows the primary colors and the three colors they make when combined.

We then completed our colorful day and made some big crayons in a mini-muffin pan using bits and pieces of old crayons:

Overall, great lesson, she really enjoyed it and she now has some new big crayons to color with.  It was a very colorful, rainbow-like day..which is gearing us up for her upcoming “Rainbow Brite” themed birthday party in a week and a half.