Water and ink experiment

This simple science experiment is fascinating

Science activities can develop children’s cognitive skills such as reasoning, problem-solving and hypothesising skills. They can also strengthen a child’s scientific vocabulary.

In this video, LEYF’s pre-school teacher, Lukas, will be showing you how to bring science play alive with items found around the home.

You will need:

• water-based felt tip pens
• kitchen towel
• water

What to do

Cut the kitchen towel into strips. Draw circles on your kitchen towel quite close to the bottom of a strip.

Children might like to do their colours in rainbow order. Can they remember the order of the rainbow colours?

Dip the kitchen towel gently into a jug, bowl or glass of water. Only the very edge of the kitchen towel should touch the water – the water shouldn’t reach the colours.

Even though the colours aren’t in the water, they should start to travel up the kitchen towel.

Talk to your child about how high the colours travel and which colour they think will travel the furthest or the fastest.

Children could experiment with using just one colour or different shapes to see how far the colours spread.