Over the summer, Jake really seemed to enjoy the days when we would finger paint. He and I would spread newspaper on the dining room table, set up our tubes of chalky-smelling poster paint, squirt dots of blue, red, yellow and white on little paper plates, and mix our primary colors together to make the secondary colors. He loved to take a dab of each color on his paintbrush before setting brush to paper. Then, eventually, he would mix them all together with his paintbrush or fingers and make brown-ish sludge. It was messy, but he loved it, and still often asks to finger paint.
Jake has been particularly interested in colors lately, especially which colors can be mixed together to make new colors. He asks us all the time. He knows the secondary colors well: blue and red make purple, red and yellow make orange, and blue and yellow make green. Now he asks a lot about mixing primary and secondary colors together. Sadly, the answer to most of those questions is: "brown".
Jake: "What does red and green make?"
Me: "Brown."
Jake: "What does orange and blue make?"
Me:"Brown."
Jake: "But you said red and green make brown!"
Me: "Yes honey, when you mix primary colors with secondary colors, lots of times you just get brown."
Jake: "Oh."
The funny part is when he trips us up. We'll be driving along, and he'll ask us "What does yellow and brown make?" And we answer "Um... I think it makes orange?" He says, "No, red and yellow make orange." He is paying attention, I'll give him that!
He challenges me when I tell him that black and white make gray. He insists the correct answer is silver. I tell him that if you mix metallic white or black together, you will get silver, but normally you just get gray. He insists silver is the correct answer. It has been debated several times now. I'm enjoying the combination of his father's brains and memory with his mother's love of art.
If your little one wants to know more about mixing colors, here is a good site to learn some of the basics.
