Autumn Colours

The pre-school children had a lot of fun learning about the Diwali festival. The children listened all about the festival at group times and enjoyed various activities and experiments involving Autumn colours throughout the week. One of the experiments that the children particularly enjoyed was under water fireworks! This activity included a glass of water, some vegetable oil and a mixed selection of food colouring. Sophie, Zoe, Alba and Ari helped to mix the food colouring with the vegetable oil before it was time to slowly add the oil and colouring to the glass of water. Alastair and Tom waited very patiently looking through the glass, Alastair asked, “What’s going to happen now?”. After only a couple of moments, the children very quickly noticed that something was happening as the colours were swirling around in the water! Ethan called out, “Wow Jonny, come and have a look”. He was very eager to show his friend what was happening too. 

The next colour experiment was walking water. The children helped to roll up some kitchen roll and placed the ends in to various cups which had a different colour in each cup. This experiment had an instant result and the children watched in amazement as the colours climbed up the tissue. Zoe said to Isla who was sitting next to her, “It looks just like a beautiful rainbow”. Once the blue and the red were about to touch each other, Isabelle wondered, “I wonder what the colour will make now?”. As the colours crossed over, Isla said, “I think it looks a little bit purple now that they have mixed”. 

The children had a very interesting week going on a daily walk to collect the leaves that had fallen from the same tree each time. Each day, the children bagged the leaves and brought them back to nursery and saved them in a box. The children then compared as the days went on, just how different the colours were looking. With only a two day space, Florence noticed, “These leaves are orange now, but these ones were still green on Monday”. It has been lovely to see how much the children have been involved in nature and taking in the quick changes of the season. Once they had finished collecting the leaves over the week, Lana, Youcef and Ada enjoyed doing a beautiful nature collage with the leaves.