The smarties experiment

We have been learning a lot about colour lately. As well as sorting and classifying objects according to the criteria of colour we decided to do some investigating. We worked in pairs and were given a transparent cup of water, a lollipop stick and a variety of different coloured smarties. First we had to sort and classify the smarties into sets according to colour. Then we wondered what would happen if we dropped a red smartie into the plastic cup? We made our predictions and then the exciting stuff began at last!! As we stirred the smarties around with the lollipop sticks we began to notice that the colour of the water changed to red. This was interesting stuff so we emptied out our cups , filled them with fresh water and began again, this time using a different coloured smartie (we were all glad that the blue smarties were back!!.) After repeating this with lots of different colours we wondered what would happen if we mixed two different coloured smarties together? Would it make one colour? Would our knowledge of mixing different paint colours together help us?? By George it did!! We also mixed different coloured paints together. Here's what we discovered.

• red+yellow=orange
• yellow+blue=green
• blue+red=purle
• white+black=grey
• white+red=pink
• black+blue=navy
• orange+black=brown

Here is our poem for mixing colours:

Mixing colour

Mix red and blue for purple,

Mix red and white for pink,

Mix red and black and yellow,

And you'll get brown, I think.

Why don't you mix some colours?

Mix two or three or four,

You might just mix a colour

No one's ever mixed before.