This is part of my 15 minute focus for 4’s series.

Supplies: watercolor palettes, water, paint brushes, paper. Translucent colorful items in the primary colors (could be these, or scarves, cellophane, or almost anything). Optional: overhead projector

I used the colorful items to show them how when we mix blue and yellow we get green, and so on. We have an old overhead projector, so I used that for the demo. But there are plenty of easy ways to demonstrate this.

Then I gave them the watercolor palettes – we had not used these before in class, so it was a chance to introduce them.

I told them to use their paintbrushes to get some red paint. Hmm… dry paintbrushes don’t work! I showed them how to wet their paintbrush, wet the paint, stir it up a bit to get some paint on the brush, and then add paint to the paper. We explored that for a while with just blue, then we learned about rinsing brushes and using other colors.

Then I showed them how to make a rainbow by painting a fat red stripe, then painting with yellow so part of the stripe mixes with the red paint to make orange, then adding blue so part of it mixes with the yellow to make green. Here’s my example and their results:

Optional Supplements:

Book: Mouse Paint by Walsh (preview video)

Song: here’s a whole playlist of rainbow songs for kids.

There are lots more color mixing and rainbow ideas in my Rainbow Science post.