Traveling Water

Your little ones are at an explorer age. They are experiencing and exploring certain things for the first time, and as their familiar adults our role is to guide them and hear out what they're experiencing. One way to really engage that exploring is by performing simple science experiments at home.

One easy experiment is the traveling water one. When we're speaking about water and plants I tend to do this project in the classroom. Usually I use white carnation flowers to show how plants absorb water, but due to lack of flowers at this time we're going to improvise and use paper towels.

I like to give a question to my students, a basic one that covers what we're trying to explore. After it helps to break down to them what materials they're going to need to answer that question. Once you're set up, have the children make predictions, what do they think will happen. Throughout the experiment, they should make comments about what they are observing. These observations can be verbal or they can draw a picture of what they are seeing. At the very end they should be able to express the outcome and make conclusions.

So lets get started shall we?

Materials:

• 3 clear cups of the same size

• 2 food coloring colors (preferably any of primary colors )

• a sheet a paper towel

• scissors

Steps:

1) Fill two of the cups with the same amount of water. Place the three cups in a row, with the empty cup in the middle.

2) Pick two colors from the food coloring ( I used blue and yellow). Place a few drops of one color into one cup, and then a few drops of the other color in the other cup.

3) Take the sheet of paper towel and cut it in half the long way, you should have 2 strips of paper.

4) Take one of the strips and place half in one cup with food coloring, and the other half in the empty cup. Afterwards do the same for the other cup. (see picture).

5) Once you have your setup ready, have your little one make predictions about what they think is going to happen. It does take time for the water to travel so let them know that throughout the day you guys will be checking it out.

After 2 hours you will see some progress, some of the water will begin dripping into the empty cup. This will show children how water travels after being absorbed by the paper towel. The two colors will begin to mix together in the empty cup, which also brings up a discussion about primary colors. Below you'll see the results. To keep the fun going, try other color combinations and see what you guys get.

After 2 hours.

I left the cups overnight, and woke up to see all 3 cups filled with the same amount of water.