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Our obsession with watercolor painting continues, but this time we’re switching things up and painting on a different canvas. Our Sugar Cube Watercolor Painting activity was a completely hands-on artistic project, and we loved every minute of it!
To start, we put our fine motor skills (and our imaginations) to good use…building with our sugar cubes! I highly recommend using a rimmed cookie sheet as your construction zone!
Towers…castle walls…I loved observing all of the different creations that our little nugget came up with. Once our building phase was complete, it was time to add some color!
If you already have a variety of liquid watercolors on-hand, then you’re all set. If not, you can make your own (like we did) using food coloring and water. I love using this Good Cooking Gourmet Liqua-Gel Food Coloring set! You will also need some water droppers, or pipettes. I purchased this bulk pack of pipettes on Amazon, that will surely last us awhile.
And then…start painting! Squeeze the watercolors out of the pipettes and onto the sugar cubes. I loved watching how the sugar cubes slowly sucked up all of the color!
It won’t be long after you start applying your liquid watercolors to the sugar cubes, that your kiddos will likely notice (i.e. freak out) that their towers and walls are starting to crumble and disintegrate, right before their very eyes. Must have been some pretty shoddy construction work, right? π But this is an excellent time to draw their attention to the scientific component of this activity, and to start asking them questions about what they think might be happening to the sugar cubes…and why?
When I asked our little nugget what she thought might be happening, her response was, “They’re melting! It’s ice!” I quickly applauded her observations…the sugar cubes are white and sparkly, just like snow and ice. And we had previously discovered (during the course of a different science experiment) that ice melts when you pour water on top of it. I reminded her how cold ice was to the touch, and asked her if the sugar cubes made her hands cold when she was building with them. She paused…and then answered in the negative. We proceeded to have a discussion about how sugar dissolves when it gets wet. And then I showed her all of the sugar particles that were still sitting in the colored water on our cookie sheet. She immediately grabbed her pipette, and used the end of it to stir the sugar.
Once our sugar cubes were (mostly) dissolved, we discovered one more fun and entertaining component to this activity…we noticed our reflections in the pool of colored water! Our little nugget insisted that I keep taking her photo as she tried out different poses and expressions. π
Needless to say, she had a lot of fun with this multi-faceted activity. She got the opportunity to be creative and artistic…to explore and experiment…to discover and learn something new!
And now I’m searching for new ways to utilize our watercolors. I recently came across a couple of fun Instagram posts where people were experimenting with liquid watercolors and salt, on canvas! And another one with liquid watercolors and citrus juice, on canvas! The photos are amazing, so I’m sure you will see more watercolor posts from us in the near future!
What types of watercolor art and activities do your little ones enjoy? I would love to hear all about them in the comments below!
