Adding color in a new way to your drawing

Materials needed:  at least two bottles of glue

Tempera paint or food coloring

Coloring books pages or sturdy white paper

Crayons or markers

Find a page from a coloring book and color it in.  Then create colored glue by adding a few drops of paint or enough food coloring to get the color you desire.  Shake or stir well.  Create at least two different colors.  Now follow the lines of your picture with the different colored glues.  Let dry. 

Ready for more?  Create your own drawing or design with the colored glue on plain paper.  Make sure all the lines touch or even cross over.  Let dry.  Now you can color in your design.  This is a great activity to do with a partner.  Each of you can create a design for the other person to color!

A Rainbow of Love on Mother’s Day

A card colored by you makes a wonderful Mother’s Day gift!

Click here to download a free card that you can print and color.  

free Mother's Day Card

You can even add your own poem or special message for your mom, grandmother or other special person in your life.

For more fun, make a bouquet of flowers by printing out the card two or three times, coloring and cutting out the flowers on the page, and trying them with a pretty bow or ribbon.

Colorful Learning

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.  ~ Claude Monet

Learning colors

Identifying colors by their shades and names will advance children’s development as learners and artists.  Being able to name a color will help them make sense of their world and build language skills, too.  Here are a few activities to teach young children about colors.

Preschool-aged children

Here's a crayon-tastic activity for younger children.  Find a picture of a basic color wheel online or create your own: using a paper plate, divide it into 4-6 sections and color each section in one color.  Place the used crayons in a bag or box to mix the up.  Then ask the child which crayon made each color and match it to the appropriately colored area.  Extend this activity by walking around the house with the crayons and matching the colors to objects you find together.  Consider taking the color wheel on your next trip to the park, grocery store, or library and locate objects that match the appropriate color.

School aged-children

For this mauve-alous activity, you will need different colors of food coloring, at least 6 empty plastic water bottles or see-through drinking cups, and water.  Fill the containers them with the same amount of water and then add the same amount of red food coloring drops to each.  Set one pure red water solution aside.  In the second container, add yellow food coloring drops -- how many yellow drops will it take for the color to change?  Set that one aside and add a few more yellow drops to the red-colored water.  Set this newly-created color aside and add a few more yellow drops to another container of red water.  Repeat the process and arrange the colored waters in a row from lightest to darkest colors.  What should the name of each color be? 

Enjoy this color experiment again and again using yellow or blue as the starting color and red as the added color.