Thursday 11 December 2014

Painting words with magic!


Harmonie had great fun with this fun activity today and all you need are these five things:

  • Paper
  • PVA Glue
  • Salt
  • Food colouring (at least 3 different colours) Gels will need to be watered down a little.
  • A pipette


WHAT TO DO...

STEP ONE

Using you PVA glue write a word on your piece of paper or card.  We chose the word Noel as we wanted to learn about Christmas words in French today but it could be any word you like.

STEP TWO

Put your card on the tray you are using (if it's not already on it) and sprinkle salt all over the glue. 

Make sure you use loads of salt, make sure that all the glue is covered with plenty of salt!


STEP THREE

Gently shake the salt off the paper into the tray.  You can carefully dispose of this or put it into a little bowl like we did in case the person doing the activity would like to try another word afterwards.

You could talk about what the salt feels like, talk about texture and ask how it is different to the texture of plain paper or the clothes they are wearing.  You could talk about the individual letters.


STEP FOUR

Now for the colour!  Using your pipette pick up some watery food colouring and drip, one drop at a time and see what happens.  

Try to encourage the child to watch one drop for a while before making another. They will see that the salt draws the colour along the lines and curves of the letters you have made!  The paint trails round the salt, it grows around the picture magically! 

Honi enjoyed seeing how many drops it took to make it trail round the furthest.   


Why does this happen?

If you would like to know more about the science behind this, you might like to read another post of mine: 



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