Exploring the science behind watercolor paints - An Art and Science Inquiry

We recently opened a gift (Learning Resources Primary Science Set) received for the twins' birthday. They worked on making a colorful volcano experiment with baking soda, vinegar and food colors. After many excited tries of the fizzling experiment it went into open play mode. The twins changed it into color mixing activity trying to create new colors. They love mixing and making new paint colors.

Also,Watercolor painting has become a go-to activity nowadays. Here is our latest art wall at our home. The old pencil sketches are being quickly replaced by more vibrant watercolor paintings. I love the splash of color on an otherwise bland room.

Art wall

I wanted to take their interest in color mixing and painting further. So I set up a little provocation. This video is my inspiration for this provocation.

Objective : Make your own paint with given house hold ingredients.
Guidelines : Try different combinations of materials rather than dumping everything together.

Ingredients all set to explore

This was an open inquiry. No recipe was given to them. They were free to use any ingredient given to make their desired paint. I had placed a few different measuring spoons anticipating them to measure for their recipes. But they were too excited to do any measurements.

The ingredients given were

1. All purpose flour

2. Salt

3. Cornstarch

4. Vinegar

5. Water

6. Colored chalk powders -  I preferred to use colored chalk powder instead of liquid food colors for color pigments. I suspected that the kids might mistake liquid food colors for liquid water colors and question the objective of this provocation.

They both assigned themselves a color (obviously pink for Nidhi and blue for Sid) and set to work.

Each tried 6 different recipes. I kept a note of each of their recipe to remind them not to duplicate any recipe. Here are the combinations they tried.

Nidhi

1. salt+color+water

2. Flour+cornstarch+water+color

3. Flour+cornstarch+vinegar+color

4. Flour+ water+color

5. Flour+salt+ water+color

6. salt+vinegar+color

Sid :

1. Salt+water+vinegar+color

2. Flour+water+color

3.cornstarch+water+color

4. Flour+vinegar+color

5. salt+vinegar+color

6. constarch+ vinegar+color

Here are the resultant paints made.  Lovely shades of pink and blues.

Fresh vibrant home made watercolor paint

Next step was to test out their paints.

Testing out the self made paints

Depending on spreadability, we discussed about terms such as thick, thin, watery etc. 

Nidhi observed that she loved the little residues of unmixed salt on her paper.

To inspire them, I painted this with the paints they made. 

Painting to inspire

"Mom, I want to make green to paint the stems of my flower. I want to make yellow paint so that I can mix blue and yellow" , claimed Nidhi.

I supplied them some turmeric powder. Here is a short video of Nidhi making up her green paint recipe.

Sid explored if he can mix two colors directly on paper. He tried painting green by overlaying blue on yellow on his painting. And it worked!

They both completed their paintings and the result is beautiful.

Sid's painting

"Hey Nidhi! Next time we don't have paint, we can make our own!", exclaimed Sid. Now that's a sense of accomplishment they deserve.

"Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is such of a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results." - John Dewey

Ramayana - An Art Inquiry

The Hundred Languages

No way. The hundred is there.

The child

is made of one hundred.

The child has

a hundred languages

a hundred hands

a hundred thoughts

a hundred ways of thinking

of playing, of speaking.

A hundred always a hundred

ways of listening

of marveling, of loving

a hundred joys

for singing and understanding

a hundred worlds

to discover

a hundred worlds

to invent

a hundred worlds

to dream.

The child has

a hundred languages

(and a hundred hundred hundred more)

…

 — Loris Malaguzzi

   Founder of Reggio Emilia Approach

Please read the rest of the poem to understand the point driven.

I admire this poem a lot. How true is each word! Don't you believe that a child has  hundred languages? I do! I know at least a dozen that Sid and Nidhi use to express their thoughts.

Here is their recent inquiry as an example.

What do kids do when they listen to a story? They listen mesmerized, recall the facts, retell the newly acquired story to every stranger they meet. Familiar? Because that is what we observe. But their minds are constantly churning. They express the understanding in many more ways which we don't observe or don't care about.

During the Dussera festival, we started story telling of Ramayana a little each day. Every new episode was received in awe during their lunch and dinner times. Thus started Sid’s obsession with Rama. He used many mediums to express his thoughts on Rama. Each medium is already known to him. So, what’s new? I presented new challenges in each medium which he worked through very beautifully. 

Sculpting:

Sid declared ,”I want to make my own Rama doll”. I presented to him some air dry clay. They have already created sculptures using play doh, modeling clay, air-dry clay etc. So, what's new?

The Challenge : Try the sculptures in different postures.

The work: Sid first tried standing sculptures of the main characters-Rama, Seetha and Lakshman. He learnt the new trick of using a skewer to balance the posture.

Next, he worked very hard to make sitting sculptures with crossed legs. Here are the finished works. Unfortunately, I could not find the sitting sculpture pictures. They proudly played with these self made dolls for quite some time.

Standing Rama and Seetha

Illustration:

Sid started illustrating the episode he heard each day. He tried various art mediums - sketching, crayons, oil pastels, watercolor. He has been drawing for each inquiry. So what’s new?

The Challenge: I describe to him a scene from the story and challenge him to draw it the ways he imagines.

The work:

 He has not seen a video or picture of Ramayan till now. All paintings are his own expressions from his mind influenced by the narrative of our story. It was interesting to see a perspective of a 4 year old who has not been visually influenced. He drew many versions of each scene, refining his work with every description of the scene.

He has now at least 50 pages of illustrations covering the complete Ramayan known to him.

Here is a short video compilation of some of his works.

Shadow Puppetry:

Sid once drew dark images of his main characters and claimed them to be shadow puppets. So I set a provocation with required materials to make shadow puppets. They drew their characters on black construction paper and I helped them cut them. The shadow puppets were born.

They have been making puppets for long. So what’s new? Not a thing. This is an open ended play that lets their imagination run wild. I loved some learning that happened. Mostly, cooperative team play. Some observations such as, how Rama grows to become a giant when the puppet is near the light source. Most fun is when characters of Ramayana are singing Twinkle, twinkle little star!

Main cast of the Ramayana story

Rama and Seetha walking to forest

Enacting Ramayana through Shadows

Loose parts play:

Sid also made characters with pattern blocks. They frequently engage in loose parts creation. So what’s new?

The challenge: After Sid made the main characters with pattern blocks, he enhanced his scene by adding ground and sky. 

Seth,Rama,Flying Hanuman,Soorpanaka and Raavana

Suddenly, he moved the sticks for ground and noted, “Look Mom! It looks like Soorpanaka is skipping. All others are going to take turns.”

Soorpanaka skipping with jump rope

I challenged him to change the scene such that Rama and Seetha are skipping without moving them. Here is the solution that he worked out.

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Rama skipping with jump rope

Seetha and Soorpanaka enjoying skipping

There has been a lot of other learning. 

Writing: Describing the scenes or naming the characters on their own.

Narrating / Story telling: They repeatedly retold the story, role played, pretend played. This helped learn a lot of vocabulary.

Mathematics: A lot of Math was involved.

For example,  During the loose parts play, Sid suddenly exclaimed, “Mom! There are ten units and four units of heads in this!” 

“ And what is ten units?” , I queried. 

“Ten units is One Ten!”, replied Nidhi.

“Yes, there are One ten and four units of heads in this scene.”, revised Sid.

“One ten and four units is 14!”, shouted Nidhi.

We rechecked. There are 14 heads in total for Raavan, Rama, Seetha, Soorpanaka and Hanuman.

Who would have thoughts kids can learn place value system with Ramayana!

Most of all, FUN!