How to Make Your Own Watercolor Paints

SciShow Kids

In this engaging episode of SciShow Kids, host Jessi and her robot rat friend Squeaks teach viewers how to create their own watercolor paints using common kitchen ingredients. The video transforms a simple art project into a science experiment, demonstrating how baking soda, cornstarch, vinegar, and food coloring can be combined to create functional art supplies. The step-by-step tutorial guides children through the measuring and mixing process, highlighting the chemical reaction between vinegar and baking soda along the way. Beyond the chemistry of making the paint base, the video explores fundamental color theory. It reviews primary colors (red, yellow, blue) and demonstrates how to mix them to create secondary colors (green, orange, purple). The visual demonstration clearly shows the color mixing process in an ice cube tray, reinforcing the concept that new colors are born from combining existing ones. This video is an excellent resource for early elementary classrooms as it bridges science, art, and math. Teachers can use it to introduce states of matter (solids, liquids, and gas bubbles), practice measurement skills, and teach color theory. It promotes hands-on learning and creativity, showing students that they can be 'makers' who engineer their own tools for expression rather than just consumers.