We returned to our scientific method of predicting, experimenting and reporting in our logbooks.
The question I posed was what would happen to the light from a torch if we shone it through a glass of water? I didn’t want to mention colour as I didn’t want to lead the children in their predictions. As a result the predictions showed that the children drew on their previous knowledge and experiences. (Applying knowledge is a higher order thought process – showing deep learning!)
“I don’t know………maybe a gas?” – Gabriel
(click on each picture to see whose is whose).
“It’ll explode – BOOM!”
“It’ll just besplode this size” (gestures about 20 cm)
“It’ll turn pink”
“It’ll make dark in the water because torches make shaddows.”
The light “goes in the water”.
“The water will glow”
“The water will change colour”
“It will go dark”
“It will go dark”
Charlie’s was the most poetic prediction however:
It will “get a bit gleamy”
Fisrt we checked what the torchlight looked like normally:
There was some debate as to the colour of the light – silver, white, bluey or grey!
Then we took turns to shine the light through the glass of water…..
These photos don’t really capture what we noticed. So take it
“I made a rainbow”
from Caoimhe:
or Zach:
“It looked like a rocket!”
and others (again click on the pictures to see who said what)
“Mine’s was gold!”
“It went like a fire – it was green!”
“It made golden blue”
“It makes like a ladder.”
“The light changed into blue and yellow on the paper”
“It put a light line”
“It was like a brown-y blue”.
“It turned into a moon shape and it was brown-y blue colour”
Again Charlie described it well:
“It’s like 10 different shapes and colours!”
Or have a look for yourself – how would you describe it?
So why? Where did the colours come from?
“the water changed the light”! – Gabi
“It bends, it was pushing it away” – Innes
The water bends the beam of light which has a affect on each different colour that makes up white light, all bending at a different angle. In other words the water seperates the colours that make white light. This is called refraction. It is what happens to sunlight reflected on raindrops which creates a rainbow in the sky.
The experiment didn’t impress everyone. Every session ends with a question:
“What could we do better?”
Normally I just get shrugs and “don’t know”s but today I got a couple of good replies:
“I prefer the spray experiment” – Charlie
“Maybe changing the colours a different way” – Gabi
So now we have evaluating to add to our skills that we practice with our science!
Am I becoming a colour bore? I feel we have been looking at colour for a long time now. However the children continue to be really engaged and invested in their learning.
As planned, I offered the same experience, well the same resources again today. Of course it isn’t the same experience as now the children have their previous learning to draw on and develop. And me being me I had to add a twist. I added a mystery mixture in test tubes and a squirty bottle.
There was some debate over what the mystery mixture was.
“Is it vinegar?” – Patrick
“It’s water!” – Gabriel
“It’s nothing colour” – Heidi
It had a strange effect – it chased the colour away intead of mixing it.
“I’m chasing all the colours away!” – Heidi
“You’re chasing them all the way to America!” – Charlie
And it had a weird effect on the paper – it turned it see through too!
“It’s invisible colour!” – Charlie
Sophie noticed that you could draw with it using a pipette.
And the oddest thing was what it did to the colours when you put them in the test tubes to mix……
It separated!Tommy’s blue floated around in little balls within the mystery liquid before settling on the bottom.
“Gravity is what makes the colours go down!” – Caoimhe
Can you guess the mystery liquid? It was very slimy…
“Maybe it’s jellyfish” – Patrick.
“No they might sting us!!” – Alex
No fear it wasn’t jellyfish but just baby oil.
Oil and water won’t mix so our colours wouldn’t mix with the oil.
Well now we have begun to think about colours separating I think the time has come to chase rainbows….
Thank you for sharing our learning!Please remember to leave a comment. Ant suggestions for areas of science to explore would be very welcome! And don’t forget totell us about any science learning going on at home!
I thought we could continue to explore colour as the children were so entranced with the colours mixing rather than dancing during the magic milk experiment.
I had intended on using the squirty bottles to make a mist for us to attempt to reflect light on and make rainbows but our inquisitive and curious scientists were so taken with the squirty bottles it seemed wrong not to let them freely explore colours using the sprays as they wished. So I added red, yellow and blue water to the bottles as well as the test tubes.
Daniel had to coordinate his movements and use his hand muscles to fill the test tube using the squirty bottle. He mixed yellow and blue and made green!
It was hard to make out the colours that were being mixed in the test tubes however,
“I made black!” – Natalie
So I fetched a big bit of paper for us to spray the colours on to.
“It’s not black it’s a bluey green!” – Natalie
“I made it orange by doing 2 colours at the same time!” – Gabi
“Look it’s changing red – it’s mixing orange!” – Belle
Natalie, Daniel and Tommy each sprayed a different colour at the paper to see what colours they could make.
But the paper got soggy and absorbed the spilled water in the tray making the colours tricky to make out. So we added a shelf from the drying rack and it worked a treat!
“Look we made purple!” – Sophie
Persevering with the tricky wee vaporizers – having to use strong finger muscles.
“I’m making orangey brown!”
We talked to one another about what the colours that we made.
The paper got really soggy and tore easily after we soaked it with the colours.
Sometimes we had to mix the colours a little with our fingers.
We had to be coordinated to shoot the colour where we wanted.
It lookedlike a big palette of colours that we had made!
We sprayed lots of red and yellow to make bright warm colours. The paper felt very wet and thin.
Finlay tried 2 colours at once! He had to use coordination and both sides of his brain to spray both at the same place!
Finn made orange by adding yellow to the red.
Isla helped Lauren fill the tube with yellow – great team work!!
Caoimhe had to be quick and coordinated to catch the water dripping off the paper.
We had to use our hand muscles and coordination to spray the colour out of the bottles and on to the paper or the tray. We made a range of colours and talked about what we had created. We remembered which colours we had added and attempted to remake purples, oranges and greens although often ended up with browns.
Patrick and An were sure they had created more than just colours…
” I made dynamic soda! It powers rockets!! – Patrick
“It’s a samurai colour!” “It’s sacorizing! (It’s like a decorated surprize!)” – An
“Look I made Bicarbonate Soda!!!”
We had to take turns for the bottles and work together, developing our social skills.
“Yes! You CAN help me!” – An to Lauren
We also had to solve problems when things didn’t work as we’d hoped like the wee vapourizers being stiff, the bottles stopping working or when we set ourselves the challenge of filling the test tubes using the bottles. We compared amounts to see who had the most and the least, using lots of comparative language.
“I’ve got many!” – Adam
Amy realised that she could fill the test tube using the big squirty bottle.
We used those pincer grip movements to work the pipettes to mix colours in the test tubes.
Jayden watched the others and worked hard to be abole to use the wee blue vapourizer.
Adam focused on filling test tubes with the squirty bottles. He liked getting them full to the brim before tipping them out and starting again.
Zara exercised those important pincer movements and finger muscles to fill the test tubes with the pipettes.
James had to concentrate so as not to spill any colour.
Working together to solve tricky problems.
Isla helped Lauren fill the tube with yellow – great team work!!
Some of the colours didn’t mix straight away so we had to solve the problem of how to get them to mix.
Broghan added red to her yellow and it didn’t mix- it looked like a cocktail! She had to give it a shake to make orange.
Zara’s blue and yellow didn’t mix completely!
Finlay added red to his yellow and made orange but it didn’t mix properly!
So we shook them (with the top covered of course!)
“Shake shake shake tomato!” sang Evie
Evie enjoyed mixing colours by shaking. She created a little song and wiggle dance to help mixing!
The shaking (and singing!) did the trick and the colours mixed well.
“Look at my green!”
I don’t think we have exhausted the exploration of colour mixing. I think on Wed we shall revisit the learning and experience again but this time with coffee filters to see what happens to the colours with them.
And who knows maybe we’ll get on to rainbows, but then maybe we’ll explore another area altogether.
“Oh I made brown – do you think this would make a penny shiny?”
After all Patrick did mention the cleaning properties of Coke! Hmmmmm……
After the enthusiasm about the bright colours of foam mixing and the shouts of rainbows being made, I thought it would be a good time to try the dancing colours milk experiment.
It’s been something I have fancied since I saw it on Pinterest.
I have had a couple of Pinterest fails with this previously and discussed my failure with a few folk at recent courses and the big National Science Network (with proper science teachers!) So this time I was confident it would work and we would have lovely dancing colours to observe.
So we poured our milk (full fat as it is the fats reaction to the washing up liquid that makes the colours move).
We took turns to pour out the milk onto our plates.
Using gross motor and coordination skills to pour milk from a big carton.
The heavy lifting and coordination in having to pour our own milk helps us to develop muscles needed to eventually write! Any heavy play actually helps us with our sensory processing and core muscles which help us to be able to sit and concentrate on a shared focus – perfect preparation for classroom learning.
Then we added food colouring. In the morning we used a straw to add the drops of colour…
Ross’s colours made a smiley face.
However after much spilling of food colouring and dyeing of the table (and hands!) I decided to offer the food colouring through the pipettes and test tubes for the afternoon (which not only controlled the amount of dye used but added the dimension of fine motor pincer grip to draw and squirt the dye and washing up liquid – again great for writing preparation).
Our predictions for the experiment showed that the children were applying previous knowledge.
“I think it’s going to explode all over you again!” – Olivia
“I think it might make bubbles because of the washing up liquid.” – Ross
We squirted in a little washing up liquid by ourselves – more hand muscle exercise! However the addition of the washing up liquid had a different affect.
“The colour is running away!” – Innes
And we made some mixed patterns with our fingers through the dye.
So some of the experiments worked. But some didn’t.
It seemed to depend on how much dye was used, how well they were mixed and which kind of dye we used. The shop bought food colouring seemed to dissipate quickly in the milk as though the fats were reacting with the dye itself, however the dye bought in bulk for the nursery seemed to hold it’s shape until the washing up liquid was introduced, making the effect much more dramatic.
We never did see dancing colours or swirls moving like in the videos, we had to swirl ourselves.
That’s not to say there was no learning! Lots of discussion followed about the colours produced and Ross, Olivia, Lara, Jude and Gracie all extended the learning further by investigating mixing and creating their own colours with the palette paints. And we were able to explore the mixing of the colours in the milk – making greens and purples.
Mistakes and failures are all a part of learning I suppose , I just don’t like having another Pinterest Fail.
I just need to remember that…
Science blog from the children and staff of Kelly St. Children's Centre.
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Well we finally got to try and make a rainbow!
The water bends the beam of light which has a affect on each different colour that makes up white light, all bending at a different angle. In other words the water seperates the colours that make white light. This is called refraction. It is what happens to sunlight reflected on raindrops which creates a rainbow in the sky.
