water dropper tree

This art center had quite a lot of "lessons" for me.  First off I needed plain white paper towels.  I wanted something more absorbent - but the nice paper towels all had decorations.  So I went with the cheaper ones.  Granted I only went to one store - next time I will look harder for more absorbent ones.  These worked fine - but I think it would have worked better with thicker ones. 

Then I drew trees on the paper towels.  With out really thinking about it I just grabbed the nearest brown marker - it was a Crayola washable marker.  When they started adding their colored water the tree disappeared into the paint.  So I grabbed a brown permanent sharpie and traced over all the trees with that.  This time the tree didn't disappear. 

Next problem was drying.  I hung a "clothes line" with clothes pins to hang them to dry.  But the paper towels were not absorbent enough and the paint was tripping all over the carpet.  So I had to set up a whole table just for drying.  They weren't drying.... just sitting in a wet puddle.  I put a towel down and put the paper towel tree on top of the towel.  Problem solved.  What was left was beautiful fall paper towel trees.

With are at this age it is more about the process than the product.  I often have to remind myself of this.  All my kids started out by just putting "leaves" around the tree branches.  But once the branches were all filled up they didn't want to stop.  Even though they knew they could get another one (I always let them do as many as they want) they just wanted to fill it with color.  In the end almost every paper towel was covered in the colored water.  I hung them up once they were all dry and they were so beautiful - Sadly I forgot to take a picture... and even more sad I sent them all home.  I wish I would have kept them up for a few weeks.