Recycled Rainbow

As a messy makerspace instructor I have found myself with a lot of extra "unusable" markers. I asked my sixth grade class to come up with a use for for these and to make an instructable on how to use them. This is what they came up with. They said they settled on this because "it is very creative and artisitc.

• Old dried markers
• Hair dryer
• Paper
• Water bottle
• Pliers

Using pliers seemed to be the easiest way we found to open and access the insides of the old markers. Once open we would pull out the colored core and store them in zip loc bags.

Once the inside of the markers had been removed we sprayed them with water on one end. The more water we added the quicker the colored water would come out the other side.

Let the water from the markers drop onto paper. We used regular printer paper however believe card stock or some other thicker paper would work better. We made sure to put several drops on the page of varying size, shape and color.

This step is where the fun really gets going. You can just tilt the paper at different angles to have the drops move around the page. We also used a hair dryer to help have more control over the colors movement. Blowing through a straw would also allow you to have even more control if desired.