I am passionate that students have fun learning at school. Part of making learning fun is by letting students explore different topics and interests through play. Play based learning can happen in many ways from allowing students completely free exploration and play to teaching students games and having them play those games to learn a specific skill.
Lesson: Colour Mixing through Meaningful Play
These colour mixing jars used water with food colouring on the bottom and baby oil and oil based paints on the top. When shaken the colours mix into the secondary colour. The two colours then separate again within a few seconds. Students loved playing with these jars and were very curious about how they worked.
During my practicum in Grade 1/2 I created a meaningful play lesson for students to explore colour mixing. Students already had prior knowledge about the primary colours but had not yet been introduced to the secondary colours or the concept that the primary colours can be used to make all other colours. I used colour mixing jars to “hook” students on the lesson as they were curious as to how they worked as well as the colours made within the jars. Students were then supplied with red, yellow, and blue paint that had been watered down, paint brushes, and pipettes. Wax paper was rolled across the tables for a colour mixing surface since the paint mixture flowed on it very easily. The only instructions students were give was that they try to make a secondary colour using the tools provided on the wax paper. Students had so much fun with the activity and their comments throughout the lesson were so wonderful. Some things that I overheard were, “I can’t believe I made green!” “This is actually really cool,” and “I made a rainbow!” By the end of the lesson all students could explain to me that primary colours created secondary colours, and some students could also name all three primary colours and the secondary colours.
Students had so much fun with this lesson that I forgot to take any pictures during the activity. What I did get a picture of though is the lego that students built for me during centres in the afternoon. Without being prompted or asked, students built objects out of lego only using the primary colours. Students were so proud to show me what they had made and it was great to see their learning be applied during their free play time.