Overview
Child-led play, exploration, and discovery allow children ownership of their learning. Such play, exploration, and discovery are also the prime time to practice social skills. This simple activity—applying colored water to a leak-resistant drop cloth—is a gateway to cooperation, problem solving, conversation, self-regulation, and more.
Ingredients
any disposable drop cloth with an absorbent top layer and a leak-resistant bottom layer
liquid watercolor
cups
straws and/or pipettes
water
Process
1. To avoid drips, cut the drop cloth a bit smaller than the table you’re going to place it on.
2. Mix up four or more cups of colored water using the liquid watercolor.
3. Spread the drop cloth onto the table. Plop the cups of colored water and the straws and/or pipettes on top of it.
4. Let the children engage with the materials. Be available for support.
• Make prints. After the drop cloth is fully saturated with colored water, provide some paper towels. If you’d like, you can demonstrate how to make a print by pressing the flat paper towel onto the drop cloth. Or you can simply step back to see if the kids make this discovery for themselves.
• Print another day. Let the drop cloth dry completely and then store it away for another day. When you want to print again, rewet the drop cloth with clean water using paintbrushes or pipettes, and print away. You can also squirt the drop cloth with more colored water, if you’d like.
• Go vertical. Hang the drop cloth on a wall or fence. Allow the children to apply color with paintbrushes or spray bottles.
• Recycle the drop cloth, part I. The drop cloth cannot be washed, but it can be reused. Let it dry out completely, and store it for next time—or let the children cut it up for arts and crafts projects.
• Recycle the drop cloth, part II. Let the drop cloth dry completely and allow children to use it for building forts or other dramatic play.
Let Them Have Freedom of Time
Evaluate your schedule. A quality early learning program does not need to divide its day into fifteen different segments. A quality early learning program should have a flexible schedule that allows children to lead learning, solve problems, and own failures. There should be time for children to make choices, assess risk, and handle conflict. And there should be time for children to get into deep play where authentic, meaningful learning occurs and they are empowered by trust and control.
During an evening of drinking wine and launching peanut butter, ketchup, pickles, mustard, baking soda, colored vinegar, paint, whiskey, shaving cream, and other stuff at a drop cloth hanging in Jeff’s studio with him and early learning play goddess Lisa “the Ooey Gooey Lady” Murphy, I could not stop thinking about the absorption capabilities of the drop cloth. The fact that it was lined with plastic made it beyond awesome because it was so mess resistant. Not a drop of the mess made it onto Jeff’s oak floor.
The next day my brain was still stuck on the awesomeness of that drop cloth. I was determined to find a way for my littles to have fun with it. I went to Walmart, purchased a 10-by-12-foot drop cloth for right around six dollars, and eagerly awaited Monday morning.
I plopped the drop cloth on the table, and set the cups of colored water and pipettes right on top of it. The children dove in headfirst, and it didn’t take long for the conversations to emerge and the collaboration to occur. “Hey, Gavin, you squirt the yellow, and I’ll squirt the blue. Let’s make green!” The tarp became a masterpiece even the most faithful 1970s flower child would envy. To milk the process (that is, to make the supplies last longer and to keep the children’s interest alive) once all the colored water had been squirted onto the drop cloth, I quickly tore off pieces of paper towel and placed them onto the saturated drop cloth. With just one finger, I gently pressed a paper towel. The bright color from the drop cloth instantly came through onto the paper towel. The children loved this! Soon, one finger at a time, they were joining in on the colorful fun.
And then the game changer happened. Jack took both hands and laid them on a piece of paper towel at the same time. He lifted them and revealed rainbow handprints. A “WOW!” escaped him, his face full of amazement and his eyes sparkling with the awareness of the possibilities. The children reacted to Jack’s discovery in a way that made me so proud. They scoured the room for objects to make their own prints with, not content to do exactly what Jack had done. They pressed lids, plastic plates, blocks, and dinosaur feet onto the white paper towel and were amazed by each print they made. They even drove cars across the paper towels, leaving rainbow tracks in their paths.
You can see video from the evening with Jeff and Lisa that sparked this activity idea here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pac8z3n8m_M&feature= share&list=UUSA4zKk4FyiKGzdtLFLO9gw and here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-3cdaDkdAI&feature=share&list=UUSA4zKk4FyiKGzdtLFLO9gw.
Problem: This chapter is over. Solution: Go to the next chapter . . .
