Materials Needed:
Since this project was going to take some time, we began after breakfast.
We started by putting two drops of food coloring into each section of the ice cube trays.
Grace watched while I helped Emma put the food coloring in her sections and was able to complete this step on her own.
Then we added water to each section.
We then put the filled trays in the freezer.
And went to play to help pass the time.
Finally, the ice cubes were ready!
Our friends from The Chronicles of Mad Molly were over and so they joined in on the fun!
The girls chose two ice cubes to put into each of their cups.
They each ended up with three cups.
Then they got down to the business of trying to get the cubes to melt.
Getting the ice to melt took some doing (note the addition of spoons in the pictures) and Mary and I decided that it would have been better to have some ice cubes partially melted already so that they could have had both the experience of getting the ice to melt, but also seeing the fruits of their labor sooner than they did.
We had the girls paint with the melted ice.
Before they would paint we had them predict what each new color would be.
Grace did really well remembering what each combination would make!
Being disappointed with this color not appearing to look purple (even though it should have been) we decided to let the ice cubes sit out and melt and come back later with the hopes the colors would be better.
About an hour and a half later....
The cubes had melted a lot more and the colors were much brighter!
Overall, not a bad experiment but certainly not a quick one! The girls enjoyed it, and did a great job making (correct) predictions about what each color combination would create. The key to making this experiment go more quickly is to have some ice cubes partially melted before the children sit down to conduct the experiment. We loved that they had the experience of trying to get the ice to melt, but with the ages of the girls and how long it was taking to get the ice to melt it could have been a disaster and they could have easily (and understandably) lost interest in it.
Shel, if you were going to do this again, could you maybe first put the ice cubes into a ziploc bag (once the girls had chosen the colors), and then floated the bags in a bowl of warm water? That's how I defrost my chicken when I'm short on time :)
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