I'm Kathy.
I care for six children in my home,
ages one through five.
- I want to make blue.
KATHY: You want to start with blue, all right.
We're doing a unit on color, which is great for science talk.
- I'm making purple.
KATHY: Science talk is asking questions, sharing ideas,
discussing what's happening and using science words
to describe what you're seeing and doing.
This morning we're outside looking around the yard
for different types of leaves and grass.
And those are kind of a bright green.
But look at these down here.
So spring is a really great time to really notice
the different types of colors.
Look at your leaves.
They're different colors, William.
After we explored different shades of green in nature,
I asked the children to create
different shades of colors with paint.
Paint mixing is a great way for the kids to see
how they can change colors.
If we add white to your blue,
Julie, what do you think will happen?
- I think it will mix up together.
I think it will change colors.
KATHY: Should we find out?
This activity was a great way to use lots of science talk words.
We had light and lighter, we had dark and darker.
Can you tell me what you're seeing?
- This one's lighter than this one.
This one's lighter.
KATHY: That one's lighter than which one?
- This one.
KATHY: You might not think of words like lighter and darker
as science words, but they give the children
a way to describe and compare what they see.
And that is an important part of doing science.
So what happened?
What color did I mix to make pink?
- Red!
KATHY: And was it just red?
What did I add to it?
- White.
KATHY: Red and white made pink.
I was really making an effort to ask the children questions
as they were doing their investigations,
rather than wait until afterwards,
because I feel like they can respond better
when they're in the middle of it.
- Ta-da!
KATHY: Can you describe your greens to me, William?
- That one's darker, that one's lighter.
KATHY: So we got lots of really great colors.
- It turned pink.
I made light purple.
KATHY: Light purple?
- Yeah.
KATHY: Color mixing led very naturally into painting.
The children made a mural using the different shades of colors
they had mixed.
We hung the mural on the wall
and I asked the children to name their colors
so I could make labels.
What color do you see up there that you made?
- Purple.
- It's light purple. KATHY: It's light purple.
Do you remember what color you made?
- I made orange.
This one's my light, and this one's my dark.
KATHY: This was a great way to reinforce some of the words
we had used to describe the colors we had made
during our color mixing activity.
- My paint is changing to back to orange!
KATHY: The science talk we do really helps the children
understand color better,
and it gives them a vocabulary to express their ideas.