Color Drops

What you need:

• clear plastic cups 
• food coloring 
• small plastic dropper 
• paper towel 
• coffee filter 
• drawing paper 
• wax paper

What to do:

1. Invite your child to fill four plastic cups with water. Encourage her to describe what she observes. To build vocabulary, explain that water is clear or transparent. Can she find other materials in your home that are transparent?
2. Offer her red, blue, green, and yellow food coloring. Invite her to add one drop of color to each cup of water. Ask her to describe what happens to the water after the color is added. Can she still see through the water? Ask her to predict what will happen if she adds five more drops of color to each cup.
3. Fill three more cups with water. Invite your child to place a drop of yellow food coloring in each cup. Then ask her to predict what will happen if she adds a drop of red color to the yellow water. What will happen when a drop of blue is added to a cup of yellow water? What happens when she adds a drop of green? Invite her to continue the color-mixing experiments.
4. Help her experiment with colors and textures by dripping a variety of color mixtures onto a paper towel, a coffee filter, a sheet of drawing paper, and a sheet of wax paper, using plastic droppers. Ask her to describe what happens with each type of paper. Your child can even create her own "watercolors" using the dropper technique.