Absorption Color Wheel

When I saw this super fun and simple science experiment via Pinterest, I thought it would be perfect for our upcoming beach vacation (gotta fit a little bit of school in each week :), and it was!  I decided to expand on it a little to make a color wheel.

To do this experiment, you need 6 clear glasses, water, 6 plain white paper towels, and food coloring (red, blue, and yellow).   We filled every other glass about 2/3 of the way full with water (a total of 3 glasses).  The girls took turns putting food coloring in each glass with water.  So, we had one glass with blue water, one glass with yellow water, and one glass with red water.


Between each of these glasses was an empty glass, and the 6 glasses formed a circle.  We rolled the paper towels and connected the glasses with the paper towels (this may not make sense, but it makes sense if you look at the picture).


Then we watched and waited.  After a few minutes, we could see the water beginning to slowly travel up the paper towels.  We kept watching...


We left and came back later to check on the progress.


We went into town for snow cones and to play at the playground and came back to find this!


The colors had traveled all the way up the paper towels and were beginning to mix!  We were all VERY excited!
When we woke up the next morning, this is what we saw.  The colors were mixing within the glasses, but they were very dark and the colors on the paper towels hadn't really mixed.


So, we kept watching, and by the end of the day we had this!



By the next morning, the paper towels had soaked up all the water and were beginning to dry out.


Throughout this process, we discussed the "why" of it...capillary action and the mixing of primary colors to form secondary colors.  We were very excited by how well this project turned out, and we saved our colorful and beautiful paper towels for a future art project.

Shaving Cream Fun

One of the girls favorite activities is to play with shaving cream!  They love to smear it all over their bodies, and they have fun mixing colors in it.  Fun and messy times!

Toilet Paper Dough

The girls and I had lots of fun making dough from toilet paper and water a couple of weeks ago.  We unrolled a roll of toilet paper into a container (this felt very wasteful to me, so we probably won't do this again very soon), and added in the water... a little bit at at time.


Then we just played...I made a cave for our Ice Age people, and O made a bowl.  E helped me with the cave and then she started knocking it down...I think she was pretending to be a wooly mammoth.






We had a lot of fun, but we'll probably never get all of the dried bits of toilet paper off of our deck...luckily, I'm ok with that :)


 

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Learning to Sew

O(6) and E(2) spent a LONG time exploring O's sewing box a couple of weeks ago.  E told me that "O is learning me how to sew!"  She was so excited.  I love their close sister bond...they love each other so much.

Warm Wood Art

We were inspired by this post at The Artful Parent to color on warm wood!  O(6) still talks about the time that we colored on hot rocks (about 4 years ago) and wants to do that project again.  Since this seems a little safer for little fingers, I decided to try this instead.

I warmed some leftover wood pieces (that I found at my mom's house) in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.  I gave each girl a piece of wood along with a box of crayons.  It was fun to color on the wood since the crayons just glided onto the warm surface.










O drew a rainbow and a landscape (her 2 favorite things to draw) while E(2)'s drawing was more abstract.  E was not happy with her drawing because she wanted hers to look just like her sister's!

Edible Artwork...Painting Their Breakfast

When I saw this fun painting activity on Pinterest, I knew I was going to have to break my "no artificial colors" rule for the girls.  (and I'm SO glad I did...we all had fun with this one!)

I filled 4 small glasses with milk and food coloring, gave the girls a few paintbrushes, and whole wheat bread, and they got to work!




I was afraid that the colors wouldn't show up that well on the whole wheat bread, but I think they look great.




O(5) painted a rainbow and a landscape (her words), and E(2)'s bread was a little more abstract.  She used so much milk that she had a hole in her bread, so she said it was a puppet...love her!




Since we don't waste expensive, organic milk, the girls had a color mixing lesson and poured the colored milk into their breakfast milk to drink.  E(2) poured the green and yellow milk into her milk to get a slightly lighter shade of green...surprisingly, she drank it all!  O(5) poured the red and blue colored milk into her glass, so she had purple milk...she eventually drank most of it.




After they were satisfied with their artwork, I toasted the bread.  Yummy and beautiful!