Explosive Art Work

Today we had a playdate with another homeschool family and the kids created some Jackson Pollock inspired art using film canisters.

Have you ever made film canister rockets?  The basic gist is that you fill 1/4 of the canister with water, quickly drop a piece of an Alka-Seltzer tablet into it, put the lid back on, flip it so the lid in on the ground and then run for the hills.  When the canister cannot contain the pressure from the reaction of the water and tablet, the canister separates from the lid and goes shooting up in the air.

It's an easy and super fun experiment.  The bigger the piece of Alka-Seltzer, the higher they go.  The kids love trying to dodge them as they are coming down too.

Anyway, back to today.  We were testing out an explosive paint bag experiment my friend Melanie was test driving for an upcoming co-op.  Unfortunately, we couldn't get it to work.  But, we promised the kids some explosive art work so we improvised by using the film canister rocket method.

We combined dry tempera paint with the water, shook until dissolved and the rest is the same.  Each of the kids picked their color and they placed their canisters upside down on their matte board.  Here are the results:

Bryce's painting.  

Abbie's painting

Noah's painting

A few things to note....you have to use more water when using the paint, if you don't it slowly oozes out of the canister (which is how Noah's has a snake on it) and if the kids place the canister lid side up there will be little spatter but some bubbling as the mixture oozes down the sides of the canister.

This is definitely messy.  As Noah said, "I look like art work." *He thought it was hilarious to hang close to the canisters to see if paint got on him."  :-D