This experiment using water, paper towels, and food coloring did not turn out exactly like I thought it would! Also, that cute kid up there is not mine. ;)
Because my kids are so young, I added a few pre-learning steps:
1. Before we left cups of food dye around the house for the one year old to lust after, I thought I'd check to see that older brother knew his secondary colors and could understand patterns, like the color wheel, or ROYGBIV.
|Or as the ring stackers call it, ROYGBP.|
C really enjoyed handing them to me one at a time so that I could spin them like tops on the stool. After each one had fallen to a dramatic death on the floor, C and P "helped" me put them back on the stacker in order.
2. Time to make a color wheel! C helped me trace a circle using a big plate and sketch pad. We traced the lines using scotch tape as a guide, splitting our wheel into six wonky pieces.
|Any activity that involves pens is a C-approved activity.|
As I labled each color, I talked about the colors with C to help keep him interested. Something must have been sinking in, because he told me that green came after yellow! Woohoo!
3. Once we had a color wheel, I helped C park his cars on the matching colors.
|We don't have any purple cars? Weird.|
4. Water! Food Coloring! Glass glasses! (What was I thinking?) We placed a cup on each of the pie sections and filled them with water, making sure that the primary colors had more water than the cups that would be the secondary colors. C helped me drop dye into each of the primary color cups.
|His hands are still a bit yellow.|
5. Next we put in the paper towels and... waited. We kept going off to do other things and coming back. C was very interested in watching the colors creep up the paper towels, but eventually we had to go to bed.
6. The next morning: the finale! So take a look at this picture and see if you can tell what is amiss:
|We have red, yellow, yellow, green, blue, blue. Um...|
Before C could notice, I added a drop of red to the glasses that were supposed to be orange and purple. To be quite honest, he was not as thrilled with the end result as I had hoped. Maybe he is just cranky pants in the morning.
But Mom is sure perplexed. What gives, red 40?
7. I froze the dyed water in ice cube trays because, sure, why not.
|Except for red 40. It's just creepy.|
Does any body out there know why the red didn't work? I have seen photos where this experiment appeared to work correctly for them. Is it because I put a little water in the receiving cups? Do they sell red food coloring that is not red 40?