Materials
Paper towels Watercolor markers
Clear plastic cups Water
Resealable plastic sandwich bags Tape
Instructions
1. Give each child one paper towel and their choice of a colored marker.
2. Encourage the children to draw on the paper towel with the marker.
3. When each child is finished with his picture, ask him to put the paper towel into a clear plastic cup half-filled with water.
4. Discuss the results with the children. (The color from the marker will diffuse into the water creating a jewel-like color in the water.)5. Encourage each child to squeeze out his paper towel and unfold it. The lines of the drawing will have blurred and softened; the color will have spread throughout the towel (diffusion again).
6. You can then pour the water into a resealable plastic sandwich bag and tape it to the window as a suncatcher. If your theme is rainbows, each child could make one color of the rainbow, then display the sun catchers together as a rainbow in your window. (This is an excellent activity to do at an outdoor table on a nice day.)7. Talk about the concept of diffusion which describes the way the color spreads through the water and the paper towels.More to doMore science: The children can use two or more paint colors to experiment with color mixing.
