Color & Capacity
We love this water activity because it’s 5 minutes of BIG learning and then an hour (at least) of independent exploring and playing.
Supplies:
Food coloring
Clear, plastic glasses
Hose or big bucket of water
To Play:
Make 3 cups of water
Make each cup a primary color (red, yellow, blue)
Mix colors to make secondary colors (orange, purple, green)
The Math:
Introduce capacity by using the words full, empty and half-full to describe the cups of water.
Talk about which cups you think will hold more water and why. For example, “This cup is really big so it will hold more water than this little cup will.”
Want even more? Make predictions about how much water a cup will hold, fill it up, and then pour it into a liquid measuring cup to begin discussing units of measurement for liquids.
After a few rounds of mixing colors and talking about how full the cups are, I sit back and just let him play with the colored water.