Fun with cotton wool

This started off as an attempt to make decorations and just ended up as some extremely messy fun with cotton wool.  That kids loved it, however, but don't expect anything decorative to come out the other end. 

We assembled some cotton wool, a few empty pots, a variety of food colouring colours, a couple of pipettes from an old Make Your Own Bath Bombs set, and a jug of water.  We also later added a spray bottle of water.

My kids got these 'Messy Mats' from Father Christmas a couple of years ago, and they are amazing.  I highly recommend them!

We mixed a small amount of food colouring with some water in each of the tubs and then used the pipettes to drop small amounts of the colours onto the cotton wool.

This very quickly turned into a massive science experiment with lots of 'I wonder what would happen if ...'

I wonder what would happen if the cotton wool was dry

I wonder what would happen if the cotton wool had been dunked in water

I wonder what would happen if I wrapped a dry piece around a wet painted piece and then rolled it around

I wonder what would happen if I flattened out the cotton wool

I wonder what would happen if I made it REALLY wet

I wonder what would happen if I put a wet painty bit around a dry clean bit and rolled it around

I wonder what would happen if I splatted paint all over a big bit and then sprayed half of it with water

So this is the finished array of creations.  There is an attempt at some Mandarin characters in there somewhere, and a big blob which was being used for stamping yellow all over another piece at one point.  Anyway, it kept us occupied for an our or so!!