One of the last classes that I taught before taking my holiday break from Boston was on watercolors. The problem with doing watercolors with kids is that they often finish them really quickly. Then they see you have more paper and want to make more. This problem was compounded by the fact that we were making watercolor postcards.
The watercolors themselves saved the day as the children started looking for something else to do halfway through the period. We were using liquid watercolors which are incredibly bright and fun to work with not only on the paper but, as one of my students discovered, off of it as well.
Right after I got a new cup of water in our super high class old yogurt containers, I noticed that there was a beautiful frozen red swirl spreading through it. One of the kids had dipped in their brush without swirling it around, creating an underwater painting. I pointed it out to my students, one of whom then promptly began to get other colors to add to it. Soon my three students (its a small class) were all cramped around the cup, watching the colors swirl together.
They asked me to take a picture and begged me to bring it in for them to see next time we have class (which wasn’t going to be until after the break). I’m posting it here in hopes that it will help me remember to bring it in to them and as an ode to the type of ingenuity that always exists in children if we only give them the license to unleash it.