When I was your age…
Liquid Fun in a Jar
I’m going to date myself here- when I was a kid, we rented a Betamax machine for my birthday party & watched ‘Splash’. My parents were extreme late adopters. We were probably the last family in Michigan to get a cordless phone or a microwave. To me, that Betamax was like having a magical movie-robot in our house.
Fast forward to today: I find it a little odd that my 2 year old can play YouTube Muppet videos on the iPad all by himself. Or that my 1 year old taps at my laptop screen impatiently, wondering why it doesn’t react like an iPhone. So I admit I got a big Luddite-grin on my face when my son recently called “Mixing Colors” his favorite game.
This is such a simple project but so far it’s given my son hours & hours of technology-free fun. Here’s the gist:
• Gather food coloring (Red Yellow & Blue) & seven or eight glass jars (a random assortment from mustard, jam, pickles etc. works great.)
• We had our son stand on the step ladder at the kitchen counter. You can do the craft anywhere- outside might be perfect now that it’s spring. (But getting to stand on the step ladder alone is enough to make him ecstatically happy, so there you go.) We also put a little apron on him. This is in case of spills, but also because the mad-scientist vibe made me happy.
• We filled the jars 1/2 full of water & added 2 or 3 drops of the red, blue & yellow dye. *One tip- Go light on the red dye. It’s such a strong color it can overwhelm the others.
• Then we let him pour away. Red into yellow.. ORANGE! Yellow into blue… GREEN! Red into blue.. PURPLE!!!
We’ve been trying to teach our son the concept of color mixing for weeks with very little success. After one round of this game, he got it: when you mix colors, they make a new color. Add more water & the colors get lighter. Mix them all, you get brown. And man, the excitement! It was like the boy invented secondary colors.
Making forts out of couch cushions, avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk.. Good to know the oldies are still goodies.
-m
Looking for a fun book to teach toddlers about color mixing? Mouse Paint rules.
