Soaking up Color: Paper Towel & Food Coloring Experiment

Playing with color is a lot of fun. We have enjoyed playing with color and color mixing since the kids were really little. And I think this food coloring experiment might just be the most fun color activity we’ve done.

Little M loves soaking up color with napkins and paper towels. I’m always finding colorful “clean up” rags when I pick up the aftermath of a messy activity. For the longest time I’ve wondered what would happen if we made a dedicated activity out of it.

When Bounty asked me to help celebrate 50 years of being America’s favorite paper towel, I knew it was time to get out the food color and the Bounty paper towels!

Paper Towel & Food Coloring Experiment

What you need: food coloring (red, blue and yellow), 3 small cups of water, droppers, a cookie sheet and paper towels (we used Bounty Select-A-Size sheets cut in half).

Make sure to use only a small amount of water and a lot of food coloring drops. This works best when the colors are bright.

We did the activity two different ways. First Little M used the droppers to squirt designs on the cookie sheet. Once she was satisfied with the amount of color, she laid a Bounty paper towel over the drops. We watched as the paper towel soaked up the color.

Tip: Less is more on this one. If your little one is anything like Little M, the first few towels will be saturated with a dark brown. Once I let her experiment with that I challenged her to slow down a bit and soak up the color after only a few drops. When she did that we were able to really see the colors  blend together.

Little M also tried squirting the food coloring straight onto the paper towel. Both experiments worked great. With this technique, she was able to see the color mixing happen as she squirted.

Tip: This activity could get messy. I have never had a problem with food coloring staining cloths or the table BUT I’m always careful to wipe it up pretty quickly. Have extra cookie sheets, plastic sheets or plates near by to lay the finished products on. They took about 12 hours to dry with me flipping them every few hours.

After the colorful paper towels dried, I hung some up in the window and placed the rest in the art center. The Bounty paper towels are so strong, the kids will be able to use them like any other paper! I can’t wait to see what colorful creations they come up with!

What is your favorite way to experiment with food coloring?

This post is sponsored by Bounty, all opinions are mine.