Crawling Water

This activity is ideal elementary school students!

This activity is a great way to introduce your student to the awesome properties of water! This activity also introduces students to the color wheel!

Materials:

* Primary Color Food Dye (Red, Yellow, Blue) or Washable Watercolors

* Paper Towels

* Water

* 5 Small Clear Containers

* 5 Large Clear Containers

* Timer

Directions: Set up two sets of five cups in a line, one for large cups and one for small cups.

For each cup use one paper towel folded into thirds. Test the paper towels to make sure that the paper towel can go all the way to the bottom of your cups without sticking too far out and set the towels aside. (The further the paper towel sticks upwards, the longer the experiment will take, so trim as needed!)

In the first, third, and fifth cup on each set add in food dye. Red for the first cup, yellow for the third cup, and blue for the fifth cup.

Fill the cups with food dye 3/4ths full with water. Leave the other two cups empty.

Add the paper towels by placing one end into the cup with water and the other end into an empty cup.

Set the stopwatch and watch the capillary action take place!

EXTRA CHALLENGE: Try testing the different colors of food dye and see what colors you can create or try with different liquids!

Idea by: Parenting Chaos