This quick illustration of water’s movement might have seemed ho-hum to Travis after a few of the more complicated activities we’ve done recently, but he loved it!

To set up, I cut a paper towel into strips, each about one inch wide and four inches long. I let Travis tear them apart along my slits, which he enjoyed.

We made a line with magic marker near the bottom of each strip.

Dangle these strips into a clear plastic cup filled with water so that the paper towel is touching the water, but not the part you’ve colored in.

The water will begin seeping up your paper towel (here’s that capillary action in action again!), and Travis loved watching it.

He wanted to experiment further in so many ways. First, we continued dipping the paper towel further into the cup. This made the marker color continue to bleed upwards, until the ink was so faint you couldn’t tell anymore.

Then we colored a wider piece of paper towel with multiple markers, and draped this all around a plastic cup. Which color would creep up the fastest? He was thrilled watching the purple and green in the middle, which outperformed the others.

Plus it was fun to play with leftover soggy paper towels and cups. So this quick experiment was well worth it!