Watercolors and Eyedroppers

Since the first day of school, the children have been exploring watercolors with eyedroppers.  It all began with some yellow and blue on watercolor paper…

Whoa!  Making green is a great idea, Ada.  Great idea putting some blue in my yellow.  I love the green!

-Spencer

Noticing the children’s continued interest in changing colors through the water we wondered…

What would the children notice if we simply used the water as our canvas?

Some of the children took time to notice the color drops as they moved downward in the water while others worked intently to change the entire body of water quickly.

We wondered…

What if we added light?

Inspired by Walter Wick’s book A Drop of Water we wondered…

What if we slowed down even more?  

Working in small groups with individual jars of water, the children explored against a backdrop of colored ink dropping into water.  How would this influence the children’s slowing down and noticing?

What would we focus on?  The drops moving down in the water?  The backdrop?  The colors as they changed from Blue, with Yellow and ultimately to Green?

“Water’s falling.  It’s gathering light.” — Spencer

“What’s happening?  Why is it not changing colors?” — Sylvie

“Look!  Look at mine!  That’s awesome!” — Madeline P.R.

“Look at mine Eleanor.  It made Green.  Why Green?” — Callen

“Yeah, I see all of the shades of Green.” — Eleanor