Here are more than ten activities you can do with your preschoolers to learn about our sense of sight and how we use it to see colors and interact with the world.

1. Paint the fingers on a white glove different colors.
2. Finger paint with pudding, mix colors and see what happens.
3. Go on a scavenger hunt in your house to find all the red items (or blue, etc.)
4. Create spinning tops with a variety of primary colors. What happens when the two colors mix? What happens if there are lots of colors on the top? (http://www.thinkingfountain.org/t/tops/tops.html)
5. Make a window hanging by melting crayons between sheets of wax paper.
6. Make a coffee filter butterfly. Draw a black line(s) on it and dip it into water. Watch the black and how it is compiled of a mix of all colors.
7. Play with colorful foods.  Dye your mashed potatoes.  Mix them, what happens?  How about mixing food coloring into butter and “painting” your toast.
8. Blindfold your kiddos and have them walk to another room – if that was too easy tell them to retrieve something or put obstacles in their way.  Talk about their dependence on sight and empathize with what blindness is like.
9. Using a flashlight (or three) take a red, yellow and blue balloon and cover the light with the balloon. Shine them on the wall, what happens when the flashlights shine at the same area? What happens if you add a green balloon/light?
10. Have fun doing some optical illusions.  Discuss how the brain interprets what we see.

Videos with sight tricks:

Optical illusions:

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