What a warm welcome from the Mini Nature Artists this morning, keen to see what was planned for our session today. During our last session, the children fully immersed themselves in the process of making natural inks using a mortar and pestle, fruits and vegetables. This week was designed to explore natural inks in more depth to reveal their magic!

​

The table was set up with a variety of natural inks that I had prepared myself, including inks made with blueberries, red cabbage, turmeric and avocado along with some additional ‘magic ingredients’. After a brief introduction, the children began using the inks to create paintings, exploring the colours and tones of the different inks. Then it was time to introduce the 2 magic ingredients!

 

Whilst some of the colours remained unchanged, others transformed in front of our eyes, from purple to turquoise and bright pink, pink to greens and blues. There were cries of glee as the colours changed and Mini Nature Artists showed such excitement to share with the group what had happened. We discussed what they thought could be causing the change and their only possible conclusion was that it was magic!

 

There were discussions about colour mixing with traditional paints and how primary colours cannot be made, and yet somehow with a palette that had no blues, the Mini Nature Artists had created various shades of blue from vibrant turquoise to deep indigo. How could green possibly be made when we had no blue to mix with the yellow. The children found great amusement in the colour transformations and made it their focus to see just how many colours they could make. Each child’s artwork had an array of different colours and some even resembling a full rainbow of colour. Each time the colours changed, excited voices and laughter filled the air as a new discovery had been made.

 

A really fun Mini Nature Artists session today, filled with laughter, exploration, science and even a little magic!

​

Back to observations.