Welcome to another Wacky Workshops project – how to colour your world.

Colour can impact everything from our health to our moods and even appetite.

Understanding how colour affects us can help us gain control over many areas of our lives.

The first step is to learn colour basics and become more aware of the colours around us. These fun crafts and activities will help children to do that.

Our world is filled with wonderful colours and showcased so beautifully in nature, which is where most artists get their inspiration for colour creation.

I never pass up an opportunity to point out beautiful colours to the Goddesses and discuss with them how those colours make them feel.

I often play a silly game where I’ll point out a yellow flower and say “Isn’t that flower a beautiful shade of blue?”.

They look at me as if I’ve lost my mind and reply “Silly Grandy, those flowers are yellow.”

When they are old enough to be tired of this game I ask them what they think would happen if they mixed blue and yellow together.

This is a great opportunity to bring out the paints and start experimenting.

They often get carried away, mixing all the colours together in the hopes of creating a magical rainbow. It usually ends up a big brown mess. But the fun is in the testing.

The Goddesses truly love rainbows – well, who doesn’t? A really easy way to create a rainbow is to drop little blobs of the colours, in the correct order, on a sponge.

All they have to do is swipe the sponge in a rainbow arc on some paper and they have an instant rainbow – beautiful!

Nature is always a huge topic when we are discussing colours. Not only for the beautiful shades of autumn leaves and bright spring flowers but also for the way nature uses colour to survive.

The beautiful flower colours exist to attract birds and bugs to pollinate the flowers and help spread their beauty.

The same red that flowers use to attract pollinators is used by ladybugs to put off would-be predators, sending a signal that they are not tasty.

When it comes to using colour in a magical way, chameleons are quite famous for their wonderful camouflage abilities.

This fun project helps demonstrate that magical ability.

COLOUR YOUR WORLD –

COLOUR CHANGING CHAMELEONS CRAFT

MATERIALS

• Two paper plates
• Variety of paint colours
• Pushpin

METHOD

• Have the child paint various colours on one of the plates. Don’t let them over mix or you will end up with a big brown mess.

• Cut out a simple chameleon shape on the other plate. You can get a template for that here.
• When the painted plate is dry, place the other plate on top of it and secure with a push pin. As the children spin the top plate, the chameleon changes colour.

COLOUR YOUR WORLD – VIVID LIGHT SHOW

We recently went to Sydney’s Vivid Light Festival and oh my, the colours!

The Sydney Opera House sails make the perfect canvas to show the magical colour show. I love to show students some pictures of Vivid lights on the Opera House then give them their own Opera House colouring sheet to see what wonderful colour patterns they can design.

For this project, you need some pictures to show the kids. A good place to start is the vivid website.

Once you’ve ignited their imaginations, give them a colouring sheet – you can get a free template here – and let them create their own designs.

If you want to avoid the mess of paints, let little kids experiment with colour mixing with these easy projects

COLOUR YOUR WORLD – COLOUR MIXING MAGNIFYING GLASSES

These glasses don’t actually magnify, but they do illustrate what happens when yellow and blue are mixed together.

MATERIALS

• Thin cardboard
• Scissors
• Cellophane – blue, red, yellow
• Glue

METHOD

• Cut a magnifying glass shape from the cardboard and then cut a circle in them for the ‘glass’.

• Cut the cellophane into circles slightly larger than the holes in your glasses.
• Glue or tape into place.
• When the children overlap two or more of the glasses, they can see for themselves the new colours that are made.

You can use this same technique to make a colour wheel.

COLOUR YOUR WORLD – COLOUR WHEEL

MATERIALS

• Thin white cardboard
• Cellophane – blue, red, yellow
• Scissors
• Glue
• Pencil
• Pushpin

METHOD

• Fold the cardboard in half.
• Draw a circle one one-half (use a bowl or large cup to trace around) and then cut so you have two circles of the same size.
• Draw a vertical and horizontal line in one circle so that the lines cross in the middle of the circle.
• Repeat with the other circle.
• Paint or colour with markers three of the four sections created so that you have one blue quarter, one red quarter and one yellow quarter, the final one remaining white.

• Cut triangles in each quarter section of the other circle and fill three of the spaces with different coloured cellophane – yellow, blue, red. Leave the other section open.
• Place this circle on top of the other one and secure it with a push pin.
• When the children spin the top circle they can see what happens when the red cellophane covers the blue paint – purple is created.

Follow me on Pinterest for more fun crafts like this.

Happy crafting and have a colourful and gleeful week, Tamuria.