Primary and Secondary Colours Lesson

I love when normal family life and school mesh together. 

Today was my third son's 6th birthday. I made him a chocolate cake and proceeded to make Fluffy White Frosting to put on top. My son requested a rainbow cake, so I said I could make one but only with three colours: red, blue and yellow. 

The kids were actually really disappointed after seeing there were only those three colours and green in the food colouring box and insisted that there were six colours in the rainbow. So I insisted there were three and proceeded to mix all the frosting in three separate bowls with the three primary colours. 

Then I took out three more bowls and put two colours together and got them to mix them. They were so amazed to see the colour change and their interest was piqued to see what colour the next two colours would mix into. 

I then got to explain that all the colours are made up of these three colours and even brown was made from all three mixed together. I talked a little then about what primary colours and secondary colours were. I was pleased to see they were really thinking when one asked about black and then explained that black and white and all the colours in between like gray are shades, not colours and some animals and even people can't see in colour but only black and white. 

Then I showed them the ink packets in our printer. There are actually only the three colours and black that make all the other colours for printing. They were so impressed. So glad we could have that lesson on colours with a a special treat for my sons birthday. I hope to follow it up with a colouring lesson with pencil crayons in which I only allow then to use those three colours. We'll see. Maybe we'll try it with cross hatching too. I'll have to think about it. Sometimes I try things like that and have to tone back on the difficulty and just stick with simple colouring. Ha!