Colour Mixing Bugs| A Fun Activity for Young Children

by learningstepbystep | Apr 12, 2023 | DIY Crafts & Activities | 0 comments

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I just love the colours that return in the spring after the long winter months. The bright reds, yellows, and greens open up a world with a different kind of beauty for adults and children alike. At Learning Step By Step, we are overly excited!

My girls have always shown an interest in colour mixing. When given opportunities to paint, they always mix colours to figure out what new colours they can create as they paint.

As they paint, with all the excitement and watching the colours change, many free painting activities end with shades of brown on paper. But they do not mind at all because brown on paper represents the beautiful colour of our skin, yummy chocolate that is pleasing to their taste or muddy puddles, which they also love to jump in!

We have been learning about bugs and insects on our learning journey, so I created a colour-mixing activity with our favourite bug of all, the ladybug!

This activity gave the girls mixing of colours the structure they needed to learn the colours they can mix together to actually create other colours they like and not just the beautiful colour brown.

Some Benefits of Colour Mixing for Young Children:

Colour mixing enables little ones to work on using scientific reasoning when observing and making predictions as they share what colours they believe the colours they are mixing will make.
Colour mixing is a great activity for working on concentration, hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.
Young children learn problem-solving and mathematical concepts when they mix colours. If one of the colours they use is dominant, they are encouraged to experiment with the colours as they are guided to add more or less of a colour paint until they reach a desired outcome.

What you will need to recreate this activity:

Markers
Learning journal
Hot glue gun
Glue sticks
Red, yellow and blue paint
Paint brushes
Containers/palate for your paint

How to put this simple and fun activity together:

This activity is straightforward and easy to recreate. I drew my bugs with a black marker and used hot glue to outline the circles so that as the girls painted, their brushes were confined to painting one bug at a time, a little like colouring in the lines. I wanted my girls to see what the colours in each equation would make.

After drawing the bugs and adding the hot glue, I added my plus and equal signs and the colour words. In under twenty minutes, this activity was ready for some learning fun!

How to present your child with this colour-mixing activity:

I would suggest that if you are working with multiple children, have a brush in each paint colour for them to use.

I provided my girls with a brush to mix the colours on the third ladybug in each equation. So keep some water in a container close by so you can wash the brush they use to mix after each use.

What to do with the extra paint left over in your containers?

Let your little ones have some fun because there are so many benefits of painting for little ones.

Painting helps little ones in the following ways:

Boost their self-esteem
Allows them to learn colours
Develops spacial awareness
Develops language development
Develops concentration
Develops fine motor skills
Develops hand-eye coordination
Develops creativity

We do hope you find this activity useful.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us by sending us a message or visiting us @learning.stepbystep on Instagram, Learning Step By Step on Facebook and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for educational resources that will help you and your littles on their learning journey as they continue to Learn Step By Step!

Thank you for being here!

Kimberlee and the Learning Step By Step Team.