I am always looking for an activity to introduce color mixing without the mess of paint! With this activity, you can do the ‘messy’ parts, have the painting done and let your child do the rest! In this Preschool STEAM activity, your child will be able to spin colorful spinners to see new colors from their spinners! The best part is that this activity is an easy, at home activity with only minor prep!
STEAM Integration
Art
This preschool STEAM activity is deeply rooted in art. Mixing colors allows a child to experience primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) and secondary colors (purple, orange, and green). Primary colors are colors that cannot be created by being mixed. Secondary colors are colors that are created by mixing two primary colors.
According to BabyCenter benchmark standard for a preschool child is to be able to identify four colors by 3 and half years old. Please remember that all children develop at their own unique rate. This activity will all children to experience three colors in one spinner. For example, a yellow and red spinner will look orange when it is spun. Not only are they learning their colors, they are learning in a fun, game-like fashion!
When interacting with your child, asking which colors they see is a great start. If your child is still developing communication skills, narrate the colors your child sees! Encourage your child to try to say the colors they are seeing!
Science
There is so much science that goes on underneath the colorful spinning tops! Things that you can introduce to your child includes: momentum, inertia, centripetal force, gravity and friction, just to name a few. Now, do I expect you to give your child a physics lesson? Not in the least! However, you can also start to introduce gravity, with dropping experiments and momentum, with how the spinners continue turning.
An added bonus to this activity is the fine motor skills practice. For this activity your child will practice pinching and twisting motions. These motions will help build the muscles in their hands. These muscles are so important as they are responsible for handwriting later on.
Math
Not going to lie, when I was creating these spinners, I was chuckling to myself. I created a new way to practice fractions and counting! During a typically day in my preschool 3’s classroom, we are working on basic operations such as adding and subtracting less than tens. So when we have 6 sections, we can ask questions like ‘how many are blue’, ‘how many are red’, ‘how many sections do we have all together’. I’m always looking for sneaky ways bring math and numbers into the mix!
Things You Will Need For Your Preschool STEAM Activity:
- Cardboard
- Scissors
- Paint
- Toothpicks
- Needle
For this activity, the cardboard will be cut into circles. I used a roll of packing tape as a stencil. Try to cut these circles as round as possible, as it will help with the spinning motion! I used a needle to pre-poke a hole into the center of the cardboard circles. Try to get these holes as close to the center as possible, as it will help balance the spinner while it is spinning.
Start Exploring Your Preschool STEAM Activity!
For this activity, I divided my spinners into six different sections. I alternated between two different primary colors for each section. I created three different spinners: red/blue, blue/yellow, yellow/red. IMPORTANT! The blue and yellow spinner did not create the color that I expected. Rather than turning green as I expected, it turned brownish yellow. For a while, I was a little stumped as to why this was happening until I thought about actually mixing paint. Purple and yellow are complimentary colors and when they are mixed, they create brown. Depending on the shades of blue and yellow you use, they may turn out brown!
This activity is more prep for the adults and more fun for kids! For older children, allow them to paint their own spinners! Otherwise, creating a spinner is pretty quick and easy! This preschool STEAM activity took me 30 minutes to create, including paint drying time! Most importantly have FUN!
How did your STEAM Activity go? Feel free to comment your experiences and learning milestones with me! I love hearing how your child is growing and learning! Thank you for reading!