Absorption - Science & Art Class Series

It has been such a busy summer at the new studio location, I haven't gotten to share about our first Mini Maker's class in the new studio two months ago. It was also our last class in the Science & Art class series. Our focus was on 'Absorption' - or lack there of.

Before we began, we talked about how oil and water can't stand to be around each other. What better way to understand that than to actually put them together. First, students used a dropper to drip vegetable oil onto a piece of watercolor paper. 

Then they used a separate dropper to drip liquid watercolors directly onto the oil. The result was a groovy, lava lamp-like piece of art. Even the adults were "Ooo"ing and "Aww"ing as the colors slid around the oil and joined up with other blobs along the way.

Now having a foundational understanding that oil and water don't mix, kids created a picture with oil pastels and then painted over it with watercolors. Like scientists, I asked them to make a prediction about what might happen. Most of them were able to guess that the oil pastels and watercolors wouldn't want to mix.

Let's move on to a project that actually absorbs. For our third station, we used coffee filters and markers to create chromatography art. Before we began, I reminded kids that some colors are made up of other others - like purple is made of red and blue. I explained that marker manufacturers add lots of hidden colors to a marker to get their color just right. 
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​For our project, we colored a coffee filter all over.

Then we folded it into fourths and clipped it to a popsicle stick. We then secured the popsicle stick over a cup and just barely dipped the tip of the coffee filter into the water. ​

Kids watched water travel up as the coffee filter absorbed the water. I explained that the water would separate the many colors in the marker and would give us a surprise design. I wish I gotten a picture of the end results!​

For our early finishers, I had one last absorption project. First students made a design on their paper with glue. Then we covered the glue with salt. I showed each child how to gently dab a paintbrush onto the salt with watercolors. Like magic, the color traveled along the salt.

It was such a fun class to start in the new studio location and end the school year.