Sunny Day Painting

Big Idea: Water can change the appearance of some materials. Heat from the sun can change water from a liquid to a vapor.

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Materials:

• Buckets
• Water
• Painting tools (brushes, rollers, spray bottles, etc.)
• Sunny day

Setup

One bucket of water placed outside with painting tools.

Activity Directions:

1. On a sunny day, have children go outside where there are many flat surfaces (the sidewalk, patio surface, outdoor patio table, side of the house/building, fences, etc.)
2. Have children use the bucket of water provided and test the different paint brushes and tools, painting with water on the various surfaces.
3. Observe the differences in the way water moves across the different surfaces and how the painting tools impact and change the application. Watch the liquid evaporate from the various surfaces.

Indoor alternative: 

1.To replicate the lessons of this activity indoors, have children try to paint on a shower curtain or towel in the bathtub, or paint on a cookie sheet with cups of water. With grown-up help, when children are finished painting and water has been removed from the area, heat sources such as hair dryers can be brought out as a testing mode for drying the water up. 

Investigation Questions:

Q. What happened to the different surfaces when they were painted with water? Even though water is clear, what happened to the color?
Q. Did the surface stay dark and wet?
Q. What made the water disappear and dry up?
Q. Would this experiment work the same way on a cloudy day?
Q. What else did you observe?
Q. Which surface had the water evaporate the quickest? Why?