Oh my goodness… It feels like Gracen and I have been waiting for this week’s instalment of our preschool book club forever! Shortly after sharing our magnetic polka dot sensory bag inspired by Press Here {one of our favourites}, Herve Tullet’s publicist contacted us and asked if we’d be interested in checking out his newest book, Mix It Up! Ummm.. YES?! {And stay tuned until the end of the post, because we’re also giving away a copy to one of our lovely readers!}
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Well, Mix It Up! finally made it to us here in the desert a couple of days ago, and let me tell you, it’s FUN. Just like Press Here, it’s interactive and requires the reader to complete some sort of action on most pages, but this book is all about colour mixing! Since both Grae and I love exploring colours, I decided that we’d combine that with the fact that Christmas is quickly nearing and create colour theory ornaments to go on our rainbow-coloured tree.
To get us started, I did a little bit of light prep work late one night and created several circular ornaments using our favourite DAS Air Dry Clay and a glass from the kitchen cupboard. I placed the ornaments on the inside portion of our salad spinner overnight {this is what happens when you don’t have proper cooling racks}, and they were pretty much dry in the morning.
Before doing our book activity, I set out the ornaments, our copy of Mix It Up!, and tempera paints in blue, yellow, and red for Miss G to discover.
After reading the book through twice, I asked Miss G if she wanted to create some ornaments using the same colour mixing / finger painting techniques we’d seen in the book. Of course she did.
Grae chose to start with red and yellow, and we designated one pointer finger to each colour. The goal was to dab fingerprints of colour on each side of the circular ornament until they mostly covered. Of course, as she made her way to the centre, the colours began touching one another and blending… So magical – orange appeared!
Once she’d explored red and yellow to her heart’s content, Miss G washed her hands and chose two new colours – this time, yellow and blue. She followed the same process as the time before, and once again, something amazing happened as she reached the centre – green started forming!
We repeated the process one more time with blue and red, and before long, her favourite colour – PURPLE! – appeared.
With our three ornaments complete, Grae wanted to take a minute to talk about what had happened. She went through each colour combination and enthusiastically explained to me which colour was made in the process of mixing.
There’s no doubt she enjoyed the process and learned something along the way too.
After letting our colour theory ornaments dry, we strung some embroidery floss through the holes to match the secondary colours we’d created in the mixing process.
Afterwards, I quickly wrote Gracen’s name, the year, and ‘Mix It Up!’ on the backs of the ornaments so we’ll remember our inspiration in years to come. Now to get the tree up so we can properly display them! ☺
Ready to see the fun things our friends did with this book? Take a peek…
fingerprint candle holder | fingerprint hand art | create & name colours activity | painted salt dough handprints
Want to try a little preschool book club of your own? See the entire series here.
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My favorite book by Herve Tullet is Press Here! We purchased the magnet wands and the magnet chips and along with the book and my daughter had a blast! So creative and educational, and most importantly, fun!
Herve Tullet is new to me, I am going to look for them as it is munchkins 4th birthday on Sunday (23rd Nov) so these book would be great
The only book that I have read by Tullet is Press Here! It’s a brilliant book.
I have heard so many good things about Herve Tullet’s books. I would love to read them with my kids!
Thanks to your blog, Herve Tullet’s books are on my Christmas wish list :)
Press Here!
Fingerworms are a huge favorite in our house!
I love the original book and I cant wait to read this one to children!
This is so cool! Just love it:)
Color-mixing is always fun, especially when the result is beautiful ornaments! I haven’t read any of his books yet but I’ve got to fix that soon!
We haven’t read any of his books yet, but they are on our Christmas list for sure. I love the ornament idea, especially since we are big into exploring and mixing colors right now. We just bought a small Christmas tree and plan to make ornaments to decorate it so this would be perfect!
Another great idea!!!! Why didn’t I think of something like that? I’m off to buy some DAS air dry clay now. Thank you! After reading your blog post about what you did with The Dot book, I ordered 7 copies of The Dot along with Press Here – the book AND the game, and Mix It Up which all came in the post a few weeks back. I bought 7 copies so I could use 6 of them as gifts including a set of water colours, 3 x brushes and a sketch pad each in each gift for 3 and 4 year old birthday presents. I have plans of giving the other books to my daughter for Christmas. I’ve already bought the coloured dots and magnet for the Press Here activity … I can’t wait to see more ideas here. I’ve passed these ideas onto so many people. They love the idea!!
I have heard about Herve Tullet’s books before but never got a chance to pick it up. My daughter will absolutely love to read it with me then do fun activities to go along with the book!
What a great color mixing idea! Thanks for sharing.
Great ideas! Thank you!
Just read Press Here! today at the art gallery
we love “the game of red, yellow and blue” sounds like mix it up would be the best next book for him
We have Press Here and love it.
Love Press Here!
My favorite Herve Tullet book is “Press Here”. Love the creativity, and the interactivity of the book! : )
Rafflecopter name: Jennifer (robbins) A.
I read press here for the first time last night and loved it!
Herve’ Tullet is new to me also. I have 4 children, but they are grown. The youngest is 17. However, we have been blessed with 2 of the greatest grandcholdren on earth. Their mommy is always looking for activities that help them learn through play. I love helping her reach that goal. I absolutely love artistic play. Even if I don’t win a copy of his book, I will be investing in a copy…maybe two! I know my grandkids will LOVE Mr. Tullet’s books.
This has been my introduction to Herve Tullet – but i am looking forward to checking out other books with my 3 and 6 year olds!
My favourite is Press Here. I like it because it is interactive and so much fun!
I like it because it is interactive
Great color mixing ideas thanks. We are preparing mixing color schema for my children in elementry school, we will use your toughts in that one. I thank you again.