Squish and Twist color mixing pumpkin tutorial

Looking for a fun art project for your mixed age group this fall?
​Explore color mixing with this fun squish and twist pumpkin activity! This technique incorporates science, and improves fine motor skills! Use this open ended process to create color mixing creations year round!

Materials

For this project you will need:

• Paper Plates (2 per child)
• Red Tempera Paint
• Yellow Tempera Paint
• Green Construction Paper
• Scissors
• Adhesive (Glue or Staple)

Before you get started

Before you set out the materials for this activity, you may want to take some time to talk about the color orange. How many orange objects do they know? Demonstrate with your hands (or using clean paper plates) how they are going to squish and twist plates. You may even want to let them practice the process without paint.

ready, set, go!

Step 1: Add a squirt of red and yellow paint to one paper plate per child (*Tip add a liberal squirt to allow the plates to "glide" easier"). You can also squirt the paint into a cup and allow the children to spoon out the paint on top of their paper. 

*Tip for littles: You can squirt the paint onto a secured piece of paper instead of a plate. From here they can squish their plate onto the paint and twist it (like a steering wheel).

Step 2: The children place their second paper plate on top of the pain and squish!

Step 3: Encourage the children to twist the plates!

This is quite the hand and wrist workout! You may notice this is easier for children with more developed hand strength.

Step 4: The reveal! Have the children gently peel the top plate away to reveal their color  change!

After the reveal children may want to repeat the steps of squishing and twisting! They will enjoy seeing the changes to their masterpiece each time they do their reveal. This is a great time to allow them to explore the color mixing process by adding more paint, or creating an additional art piece using different colors.

Step 5: Allow the plates to completely dry! This may take overnight depending on how much paint is used ;)

Step 6: After the plates have completely dried, allow them to decorate their pumpkins with construction paper stems, and other accessories!

Repeat this technique year round using different color paints, and twisting and squishing with different objects! What ideas can you come up with using this technique? I welcome you to share them in our FREE FB community! 

Shout out

A huge thank you to Building Blocks Family Childcare for trying out this activity and sharing their creations!

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