“Sally, look!  My rock turned purple!” Three-year-old Eleanor can’t contain her excitement as she changes the color of a rock with her paintbrush. Ah, the joy of painting rocks with water. Yes, water!

I will be the first to admit that I really wanted to be the educator who LOVED paint and easels and smocks and all of the joy that it gave me on the one day of the month that I actually got to use those paints when I was in kindergarten myself. Yes, I wanted to be that educator!

But I discovered long ago that my vision of paint utopia was unrealistic, which made me feel like a failure of a preschool teacher. I have made peace with my aversion to thick, gloppy, messy poster paints and moved on to watercolors. I’ve perfected the art of keeping them all together in a bag and whipping them out with a flourish to entertain my early learners on a snowy Monday, feeling like a rockstar of an educator. Well, sort of, but not really. The unvarnished truth is that paint is just not my favorite medium.

But there is one kind of painting that I really like—and that is painting outdoors with water. If you struggle with the mess that seems to be an inescapable part of painting or your landscape looks different as we navigate the global pandemic, then welcome to my water paint party! Regardless of the age or developmental stage of your students, this kind of painting doesn’t get old. Simply dig out the paintbrushes and a water source and let the celebration begin. You will never, ever go wrong with water play of any kind! On hot or dreary days, just bring out the resources, including whatever you need to document the learning standards that you’ll meet, because this is going to be a hands-on, brain-building bonanza!

It took me years to figure out how to keep everything in one place for easy access when the mood strikes. Paint rollers or paintbrushes from leftover family paint projects work extremely well. Those bigger brushes and rollers are really great for building the strength and muscles in the hands, wrists and arms, which will make handwriting easier when the time is right. No need to rush that. We’re too busy painting with water, baby!

Wondering how to get started? Use what you have! There is no need to make a purchase for this activity. We like to start out small with younger children. I have all of these supplies from my earlier attempts at what I thought my paint play should look like. Setting the stage with simple materials like paintbrushes and water creates an environment that allows children to become curious scientific researchers.

“Will the rock fit in the paintbrush hole in the cup?” Scientific investigation going on right there!

“Wait! My rock isn’t purple anymore!” Eleanor has been so busy painting other rocks that she has just made her way back to her favorite rock. As her friends gather around for a closer inspection, four-year-old Noah says with a giggle, “It evaporated!”

Wow! It’s always a delight when friends can lead the learning with one giant vocabulary word like EVAPORATE!

“Watch. If I paint here on the sidewalk, it will disappear,” Noah adds. “The sun dries it up. It evaporates!”

Without a sound, the whole gang begins painting the sidewalk to see if their watery brushstrokes will evaporate as well. This is hands-on, child-led learning at it’s finest. So much is happening in this moment. We have children using their leadership and language skills and mentoring their friends. We have scientific inquiry happening at their level of understanding. We have PLAY!

Don’t be surprised if the sidewalk, chairs, tables or other loose parts make their way into this adventure. It’s fun to watch their brains light up with observations, predictions and cause-and-effect scenarios as the water changes each surface it touches. Preschool children have an innate passion to investigate and make sense of the world around them. By integrating science and mathematical discoveries into their play, we are giving them a strong foundation and understanding of their world.

As the children in the group begin to express wonder and share their observations, the water play generally takes on a life of its own. By bringing in buckets and pans of water, along with a collection of pouring cups and pitchers, we can extend the learning into the mathematical world of quantities, estimation and volume. All of this is data analysis. It may not yet be recorded on paper, depending on the development of your group, but you are planting the seeds for this activity in the coming years.

Add this to your toolbox of outdoor learning.

Of course, we often bring this activity indoors as well—usually in the early spring, when the snow won’t melt and the sun won’t shine.  My indoor setup usually looks something like this:

It’s a great crabby Monday activity that will surely lighten the mood in your classroom. Happy water painting!

An early childhood science area is usually made up of tools used for exploring materials and collections of materials. Tools such as magnifying glasses, goggles, light tables, mirrors, magnets, specimen viewers,sorting trays, tweezers and thermometers (to name a few) should be made available to children at all times so they can investigate the “collections” you have in your room.  Ideally, the children themselves helped in developing the classroom collections.  For example, during walks around the neighborhood, the children can collect leaves that have fallen to the ground.  At this time of the year, your leaf collection can be pretty spectacular. Unfortunately, this collection needs to be replaced annually. as the leaves will dry out and fall apart.  That process, in and of itself, is a pretty interesting one for children to explore.

It is nice to have a collection of rocks and stones.  Again, these will range in type depending on where you live. Outside of small pebbles (choking hazard) I would encourage the children to collect all sorts of rocks. The wider the selection, the more attributes they will have. Since Chicago is right on Lake Michigan, we also have a never ending supply of shells.  This collection can take years to build, but shells are an awesome found material that can be explored in a variety of ways.

So what does all of this have to do with math?

It is pretty fascinating to observe young children investigate materials and collections in the science area. I like to consider ways that children might use a variety of materials in authentic ways, with enough time and space to allow for deep exploration. It is a natural instinct for them to separate the items, categorize them, look for common traits or characteristics, order them, sort them, and count them.  The more interesting the collection, the more the children will want to spend time with it. Imagine putting out the container of seashells you see above.  There are a lot of shells all crammed in there.  I am not so sure that this is the best way to encourage deep engagement. Try reducing the collection to a smaller variety and then place those on a tray with a magnifying glass.  What do the children do?  How do they approach the materials?  How can you support their explorations while encouraging their instincts to categorize and sort?In the example above, the teacher has put out 4 shells.  They all have a common shape however, the colors and sizes are different.  This seemingly simple set-up encourages logico-mathematical thinking.  Children are faced with a relationship conundrum.  The shells look the same but they are different. It is in their “differences” that the children are able to identify the relationships between them.  One shell is smaller.  One shell has stripes.  They have to think about “same and different.”  They also have to identify their attributes. It reminds me of the Sesame Street song, “One of These Things is Not like the Other” where three items in a collection are similar and one is dissimilar.  Here, three shells are white and one is not.  Three are big and one is not.  In order for children to figure this out, they have to make sense of the relationships between them.

The differences between these shells is much more subtle.  You can hardly see the color change in the fourth shell.  But, if you provide the science tools, like a magnifying glass, the children will see the differences much more clearly. You can lay shells out on the light table as many of them are opaque or partially opaque.  The light will come through the shells in places and allow the children to see details they might not otherwise notice,

When you put out your your leaf collection, help organize the leaves in some fashion so children can approach them with purpose.  Perhaps start with the green leaves.  These are less likely to fall apart as the children handle them, and may be a little bit easier to study.  They will probably still lay flat so it is possible to put them under a microscope.

This is a leaf from a Birch tree.  You can clearly see the cells and the veins running through it. Depending on the quality of your microscope, the children will see some version of this and can make great observations about what they see.  Point out some of the characteristics of the leaves they are looking at.  Are they symmetrical?  If they are, then the children can fold them in half along the center vein and both sides will match up.  If they are asymmetrical, they won’t.

On another day, bring out the leaves that have begun turning colors.  How are these different?  How are they the same?  Be sure to leave a few green ones out for comparison.  Have the children feel the difference between the textures of the leaves as well.  Observe as they use their math skills to organize the collection into categories that make sense to them.

How else can you use the science area to support early math competencies?