Drench your kids in Colour (the messy-free way)! (or ‘5 ways to have ‘non-messy’ fun with colour while secretly stimulating your child’s development’)
Have you ever heard of ‘colour-drenching’? It is a term used in interiors for covering every surface in the same colour. Here’s what came up when I googled it:
I love the idea - surrounding yourself in colour like a cocoon. A comforting feeling and one which is also, perhaps surprisingly, very calming. The theory behind this is that there are no hard edges where one colour meets another abruptly. Everything flows, nothing jars, one surface simply seamlessly blends into another. Lovely hey?!
But have you ever thought about applying the principle in other ways?
How could it be adapted as an activity to try with your kids? But in the ‘NON-MESSY’ way!
Here’s some ideas which I came up with:
1. Colour-drench yourself! (Through fashion, not paint!)
Dress entirely in one colour for the whole day! And I mean YOU as well as your kids! Can you do it?
Think about tones of colour - there’s a whole spectrum of colours which come under the name ‘red’ for example, from a pinky red through to a deep dark burgundy red and across to a fiery orange red. All of these could be mixed in one outfit and yet when combined they still come under the term ‘red’.
Conversation starters with your kids:
Which colour should we choose, and why?
What do you like about that colour?
How does it make you feel to wear that colour?
How can these two different colours, still be categorised as ‘red’ (for example)? (Discuss tonal variations - mixing a colour with black or white to make it darker or lighter for example, or mixing it with other colours).
How far could you take a colour, do you think, before it isn’t that colour anymore?
Does Mummy/Daddy look daft? 😂
Dare we go out like this?!
Colour-drenching in fashion - but notice the different tones of the single colour. (Photo Credit: Kosmas Pavlos; cited in GQ Magazine Online)
2. Colour-order their toys
A great way to ‘tidy up’ without them realising! (See below for conversation starters.)
3. Find things in a single-colour - Option A
Using the toys from idea number 2, or anything else you can find around the house in that particular colour, gather them together.
You could paint the inside of a shoe box the same colour and gather the items in there.
Conversation starters with your kids:
Was it easy to find the items once you knew what colour you were looking for? Lead on to how having a focus on something in particular can mean that you’re more likely to ‘see’ it - an interesting one for anyone who encourages the idea of focusing on ‘your dreams’ and ‘goals in life’ in order to make them more likely to happen.
Was there anything which you weren’t sure was actually that colour or not? E.g. can something which is nearer to purple than blue still be put into the blue box? When does blue become purple?
If there are character toys in the box, discuss whether they will like being in there with other toys of a similar colour? Why/why not? This is an opportunity to bring racial issues into your conversation and highlight how different appearances are not a bad thing but in fact quite the opposite, and also how we are often quick to judge people based on how they look.
This activity would also be great done outdoors, searching for colours in nature. You could paint each section of an eggbox a different colour and ask the kids to fill each one with things they find of each colour.
A great idea for younger kids when out and about in nature (Photo Credit: unknown; image found here)
4. Find things in a single-colour - Option B
As with number 3, gather together anything in a particular colour. Then display them in an interesting way, and perhaps take photos of the display. Think about the framing of the image, and the lighting. You could also play with filters after taking the photo.
Conversation starters with your kids:
As well as the conversation starters in number 3, you could also discuss:
How does the lighting change our perception of the colour?
Does the lighting change the perceived colour of some objects more than others? Why?
Does the texture of the object make a difference to how we perceive the colour?
How does our perception of the colour of one object change depending on what colour is next to it? Search for ‘colour optical illusions’ on Google to explore this further - our eyes play tricks on us!
When then looking at the photo itself, discuss how the colours change when you apply different filters. Does this make the image less ‘real’? This would lead well into a discussion of ‘real’ and ‘fake’ images in the media.
If you can go into the ‘controls’ to edit your photo, look at the differences brightness, saturation, colour balance, etc etc makes on the image itself.
Save the different versions of the same image you create in a folder of their own. When looking at them as a whole, do they all still represent a single colour? Are they on a spectrum of colour, and if so can you order them? Could they easily spot the ‘original’? Again, what does this suggest about images in the media which have been heavily ‘altered’? Point out how easy it is to do that!
Above is our attempt at colour-drenching! We found items that could work and arranged them into a ‘scene’ with the circles in the top right representing the sun 💛 and the moon 💙 (Photo credit: (my brother!) Kerry Harrison; Styling: me and my kids!)
5. “Name the colour!”
Use all the items of one colour that you’ve found to spell out the colour they represent - literally! Lay the items down on a surface (of the same colour if possible) and arrange them into each letter.
Or… just to play with their minds! … write a different colour’s name 🤯 So write ‘blue’ in items which are all green (see below for info on how this creates a challenge)!
Conversation starters with your kids:
Discuss the broad range of colours which you’ve actually found, all of which are categorised by a single term.
Look at how some items when taken out of the ‘family of greens’ for example, actually could also belong in the ‘family of blues’. This is a nice way to introduce a discussion about how not all families are formed in the same way, and that’s ok. If children have parents who are separated and are part of two different families, or for adopted children, this is a good way to open up that discussion.
When writing another colour’s name, discuss how what we see around us affects what we read. The ‘context’ when reading influences our understanding, and this is a nice way to discuss this idea. When children learn to read they use more than just the letters and words to understand the meaning.
There have been studies which prove that if the name of a colour is presented in a colour that doesn't match, it can affect how quickly a person is able to name the colour they're actually seeing. This is called the Stroop effect.
Fancy testing yourself? Read more about it, and take the text yourself here.
Can you say the colour and NOT the word?!
So while THIS kind of ‘colour-drenching’ can be fun! There are definitely MESSY-FREE ways to play with colour!
[By the way, this is ME! Lovin the purple paint 💜🤣]
So why not ‘colour-drench’ your kids and see what conversations come out of it, alongside all the fun!
I’d love to hear what you do! Tag me on instagram @this.is.wonderlust
Let’s explore this colourful world together! 🌈
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