#babipurSTEM – Colour Wheels

This fortnight’s challenge couldn’t be simpler. Make us a colour wheel. Best colour wheel wins!

What is a colour wheel?

You never have to look very far to find a colour wheel. They are used everywhere for all sorts of things. Signage, in the supermarkets, kids classrooms are full of them. They can evoke particular emotions and even made food more (or less) appealing.

Teaching your child the colours is something you probably do without even thinking and it is a fundamental skill for them all to learn. Colours are frequently associated with moods (feeling blue and green with envy), weekly rhythms (Grapat 7 Moons is a lovely set if you’re interested in the waldorf colour rhythm) and general safety; Red is for danger and we all know Green means go!

We want you to explore colour wheels this fortnight and use anything or everything to create them! You could do a nature one with leaves and flowers, or a wheel made from clothes or nappies, you could do one with food and of course you could do one with our lovely wooden toys?!

Colour Wheel Ideas

We’ve opted to paint one to begin with. Or two actually. We used them together to demonstrate to our little ones how colours compliment one another and work alongside each other. We used the Okonorm Watercolour paints for this and it didn’t take long at all. It also has the satisfaction some little ones crave of using pretty much every colour in the tin!

We were also slightly inspired by the new Grimms Wooden Colour wheels. Very tactile and lovely to play with if your little ones aren’t a fan of painting!

After they dried we cut them both into circles, one slightly larger than the other. We fastened them together so we could spin the smaller circle around to see for ourselves which colours work well and which colours clash. This activity could be entirely carried out by school age children and preschoolers with a little assistance.

Our children quickly identified the primary colours; red, yellow and blue and from there the secondary colours; purple, green and orange. We then used the wheel to discuss the tertiary colours and made up our own names for them. ‘Looks like you’ve got a cold green’ and ‘Orange like Charlie’s hair’ were our particular favourites!

We also had lots of fun teaming it with our favourite colourful book, any excuse for a themed activity in our house is always a winner!

Colour Wheel Mandala

This challenge is crying out for some epic flat lays which we are very much looking forward to seeing and mandalas are a great way to engage children for short periods of time. We challenged our children to go and find different coloured objects to make quick mandalas. We love the variety in their creations. The Grapat Mandala pieces are always sought after in our activities so we weren’t surprised to see them sneak into a wheel mandala!

Phenology Wheels

A few weeks ago our Buddy Jacqui wrote us a fabulous guest blog on how to create a phenology wheel. You can find it >here<

This is a great way to encourage mindfulness in children and introduce the concept of time, dates, weather patterns, seasons etc. It is such a beautiful idea that we couldn’t resist having a play with a simple lunar colour wheel!

How do you enter?

All you have to do is post a picture or video on your public Instagram account or in the Babipur Hangout Group on Facebook showing your little ones making learning fun whilst making Colour Wheels. Use the tag #babipurSTEM so we can find your entries and on Instagram don’t forget to tag @babipur too!

Multiple entries are always encouraged and we’ll post some STEMspiration for you over the fortnight. The challenge will run for 2 weeks and entries will count from today up to Wednesday 26th June 2019 at 11am. Both the winner and the next challenge will be announced shortly after.

What’s the prize?

This fortnight we thought we’d make the prizes the fabulous Okonorm Water colour paints (pictured above) so you and your little ones can make rainbows whenever you feel like it and a set of Grapat Mandala pieces (choice of what we have in stock).

You can find a blog post >here< explaining the concept of STEM if you’re unfamiliar with the idea. Please feel free to ask us any questions, this challenge is all about having fun whilst exploring a simple theme in an educational way.

We can’t wait to see what you all come up with for this challenge. We love looking through your entries and seeing how you make colourful learning fun with Babipur!

#lovebabipur