🔍 Discover🌱 Montessori-inspired🎨 Creative🔬 STEM
🎨 Colour Mixing Cups
Three colours in, three new colours out.
Ages
2–5
Duration
20 min
Cost
$1
👶 Kid challenge
Easy
🧑 Parent energy
Hands on · 3 min prep
⚠️ Safety first
Stay in the room. Food colouring stains — small amounts only, never left with a child alone.
You know your child best — supervise the whole time and skip anything that isn't right for them. See our Terms.
Why this is good for your child
- ✓Colour theory
- ✓Pouring
🌱 Montessori-inspired · Sensorial
What you need
Clear cupsWaterFood colouringPipette
Nice to have — not needed today ($1)
Everything we put in your daily three is free and already in the kitchen. This one needs clear cups if you want to try it.
Search Amazon US for clear cupsThat link runs a search in the shop closest to you. It isn't a recommendation, we don't check what comes back, and we earn nothing from it.
How to do it
- 1Make one red, one yellow and one blue cup.
- 2Give them three empty cups and a pipette.
- 3Let them invent orange.
How it actually goes
The honest version — including what "going well" looks like at this age.
- ⏱ 30-second set-up
- Thirty seconds: put clear cups, water, food colouring on a tray or a clear bit of floor, and sit down next to it before you call them over.
- 🧑 What you do
- Show it once, slowly, without talking over yourself. Then hand it over and stop helping unless they ask.
- 👶 What they do
- Touch, shake, sort and compare until it makes sense to them.
- ✅ What success looks like
- At 2–3 they'll do it their own way, not yours, and stop after five minutes. Both of those are fine.
- 🧺 How to put it away
- Everything back into one basket or tray, carried back to its spot by them. Naming the spot out loud is what makes it stick.
- 📈 When they outgrow it
- Older? Add a blindfold or a guessing round — same thing, harder.