During free play, a group of tamariki began discussing what colours they thought they could create by mixing two colours together. Our tamariki eagerly shared their ideas and predictions with one another, testing their working theories through hands-on exploration.
To make the experience even more exciting, we used baking soda and coloured vinegar to create bubbling, foaming reactions as the colours combined. The tamariki watched carefully as blue and yellow became green, red and blue turned purple, and yellow and red created orange. There were many moments of surprise, excitement, and curiosity as tamariki experimented with different colour combinations and observed the changes taking place.
Throughout the experience, the children strengthened their communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills while learning alongside their peers.
This learning links closely to Te Whāriki learning outcome in the exploration strand – Te rangahau me te mātauranga | Making sense of their worlds, by generating and refining working theories, as our tamariki explored, questioned, predicted, and discovered new ideas through meaningful play.
The tamariki remained deeply engaged throughout the activity, confidently explaining their discoveries, comparing results with friends, and revisiting experiments to test new predictions again together.