Early Elementary-aged children can consider the differences between multiple types of paper (like coffee filters, paper towels and typing paper), make predictions about their absorbencies, and then test their ideas.

Through which type of paper does your Early Elementary-aged scientist think water will move most quickly?

Set up an experiment and test your ideas!

This activity provides many opportunities to discuss some similarities and differences between a snowflake made of paper and a real snowflake.

Extension Activity
Challenge older Early Elementary Schoolers to think about what a real snowflake looks like. Can your young scientist make a good model of two different kinds of snowflakes? What makes the two models good?

Help your young scientist conduct some research about snowflakes, and how they are formed, in books or on the Internet (see suggestions at left).

What aspects of real snowflakes are still not represented in the kind of model made in the Capillary Action Snowflakes activity?

Early Elementary aged children can describe what they see as the water slowly moves through the paper.

Extension Activity


Water dropped slowly on to a flat coffee filter will spread throughout the paper, carrying the pigments with it and mixing the colors.

The forces of adhesion and cohesion are so strong that water will also move up through a coffee filter, defying gravity, if one end of the paper is dipped in water.

To try this at home, color a coffee filter, fold it into a cone shape and dip the pointy end of the coffee filter paper into a cup that has a small amount of water on the bottom.

Things to Think About