color theory for toddlers

My daughter and I had such a great time this morning using an eye dropper on wax paper.  I filled three bowls with yellow, red, and blue liquid watercolor and set a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet.  

My three year old quickly learned how to put the eye dropper under the water, squeeze and release to capture the color.  She took great pride in creating big and "tiny-tiny" drops on the paper.  And made me laugh as she explained that "this was a map to Canada". 

---

She quickly caught on that she could make new colors by adding water from the other bowls and took great delight in seeing secondary colors appear before her eyes.  

This was a great exercise in fine motor skill as well as a sneaky lesson in color theory. guarantees guarantees was thinking that I would use it next year in my kinder classes when we talk about making secondary colors.  In the past I've set up stations of different color mixing activities and I think that I'll add this to the rotation.  I might even make it a bit more "color fair" like by expanding it with the help of parent volunteers and a longer class time.  Ah, the things I dream of during the summer months.