Art : Watercolour - Colour Mixing Triangle

I was reading another blog and found a link to a site that had this activity - Colur Mixing Triangle. I knew that was what I wanted to do the moment I set eyes on it.

I was looking for a good excuse to create more opportunities for my boys to mix colours and just play around with paints. How else can they learn to mix the exact colours they need when they are really painting a picture?!

I had in mind to do this activity about a week ago but thought I might as well take advantage of the fact that I will be introducing the concept of Triangles in Mathematics to sneak that in. I wanted to cover Triangles for Mathematics because I planned to learn about key historical Greek figures in ancient Greece. And how can one not talk about triangles when you want to learn about Pythagoras? ... One thing just leads on to another.

I get very excited when I see everything I planned just relate and gel up so nicely. I always believe God's hand is in bringing just the right resources to my attention at just the right moment! This kind of "coincidences" happens too often to be shoved aside as pure coincidence.

So here I am. I have taught my boys how to use the compass to draw equilateral triangles. (See my post on Triangles.) We used the wax from a candle to waterproof the insides of the triangles. I had a chance to explain how God also protects leaves by coating them with a waxy cuticle layer to waterproof them .... Science thrown in as well ;-) We did the rest of the activity as suggested. We did also try mixing more colours (other than the primary colours).

I talked as I showed them what to do, saying something to the effect of "Sometimes when we are painting the leaves on a plant (put a blotch of green), we might see it under strong yellow sunlight (blotch the yellow and blend). But sometimes if we paint it at dusk, we might see tinges of blue (blotch the blue and blend)."

The project looked easy enough. The challenge was to keep our brushes uncontaminated with paints of other colours. I have to constantly remind my boys to wash their brushes. It doesn't come naturally to them but that's okay. We are all learning :-)