The other day, we had a couple extra kids in the house, and the ground outside was still soaked from all the rain. What to do? As we were eating snack around the table, a few kids started discussing colors and what happens when you mix red and yellow. They couldn’t come to an agreement, and I saw the perfect opportunity for a little learning!
We broke out the food coloring and whatever glass containers I could find and set up a little color mixing station for each kid. I put red, blue, and yellow food coloring in small glass bowls with a little water (along with eye droppers) and then gave each child a “mixing bowl” with some clear water to begin.
We began the session demonstrating each primary color combination and then I let the kids experiment at will.
The idea was to get fresh water each time you wanted to make a new color combination, but not all the kids complied with this idea. 🙂
There was a lot of mixing going on in all the cups here!
After a little while, we broke out the star ice cubes that were in the freezer. They already had blue food coloring in them, so we added them to yellow water or red water to watch what would happen. The kids loved watching the water change slowly as they continued to stir and watch the ice cube melt.
The younger kids got tiny plastic containers (I picked up a set of 10 of these for $1 at the Dollar Tree!). They seemed to love mixing up the colors too!
This little girl managed to make the exact same color green as her shirt!
After a while, we had to put towels on the table because things were getting pretty wet. This might be a perfect activity for out on the picnic table. Though, you should have a big bucket of refill water nearby.
The little ones got some fine motor practice by squeezing the eye droppers, but they did a lot more stirring than anything.
All in all, this was a great rainy day activity. The oldest kids (age 4) stayed at it for almost 2 hours!! And it held the attention of the other kids for at least an hour. Of course, I had to stay pretty involved, dumping old water and refilling the mixing cup, but I got the kitchen cleaned up in the meantime and no one was fighting! A success in my book!
What about you?
What kind of rainy day activities do you keep ready to go?
Check out a few of these sites for ideas!
10 Rainy Day Toddler Activities by And Then There Were More
64 Ideas for Sick Days or Any Days by Sarah E White
Rainy Day Activities Pinterest Board