We started the experiment by filling up 4 clear cups with coloured food colour (Red, yellow, blue and another one with red) and put them about 4 inches apart. Then we put another 3 clear empty cups in between. We grabbed 6 strips of paper towels and placed one end of the each paper towel into the glass with the water and the other end into an empty cup. We repeated this for every cup, thus having 2 paper towel strips in the empty cups. We left the cups sit for a few hours and check on them every hour to see what happened.

The children learnt that water travels up and across the paper towel out of one glass and into another. They could see that the coloured water in the empty cup was a mixture of both adjacent cups’ water.  They learnt that red and yellow made orange, yellow and blue made green, blue and red made purple.

Later on during the week children were given some 3 cups of coloured water – red, blue, yellow and they were asked to create a painting on paper towels. They could see that when the colours touched they changed their initial colour – thus mixing into a secondary colour.

Submitted by Ms Marilyn Bugeja, Yr 1.1 Class Teacher