Today’s playful preschool theme is all about rainbows! I decided to try a little bit of a rainbow melting ice experiment with the kids.
How to Set Up a Melting Ice Experiment
We compared two different experimental styles in a rainbow of color.
Materials we used
Ice
Coarse salt
Food coloring
Purple gel food coloring
Watercolors
Directions for our first melting ice experiment
First! You will need to freeze 2 big blocks of ice. I used a simple plastic lunch box that was in a rectangle shape filled with water and left overnight. Next you will need some food coloring. I used normal liquid color as well as a purple gel coloring because no matter how much I try I can never get my mixes to turn purple!
The rest I was able to mix from the base colors as instructed on the food coloring box which I found in the cake aisle in the local grocery store. You will also need coarse salt.
Take out seven small bowls add half a tablespoon of salt to each and a few drops of coloring then mix. Don’t be shy to use your fingers. Once you have all the colors sprinkle a rainbow on your block of ice.
Yip, love this purple! It comes from this neon set of gel coloring.
We watched for a few minutes as the salt ate away at the ice to produce craters everywhere it touched and the color from the salt went into these craters to look beautiful.
Directions for our second melting ice experiment
Our next part of the ice melting experiment was to see if we could get a better result with some water paints. This idea was inspired by Lalymom from the ebook Fizz, Pop, Bang! Playful Science & Math Activities. Check it out!
So here we salted our ice block with plain salt. It was kind of hard to see the ice making the craters because of the lack of color. THEN we started painting our rainbow with the water paints.
They took nicely and after a few minutes more of melting we were able to see our craters better.
Take a look at that color!
Painting the ice after the salt had been added was definitely a more visual experience versus the color salt.
The run off from this was even a rainbow! There were many ooh ahhs from the kids.
Of course! There was poking too as we needed to feel how the ice had melted. Yip, very rough stuff. Oh and the colors splattered on the shirt below, washed out.
See our other rainbow activities from last week!
Sort and Count Rainbow Puzzle Busy Bag
Love it? Pin it!
More awesome Rainbow themed ideas!
- Rainbow Letter Formation Sticky Wall by Still Playing School
- Language Activities for Preschoolers: Rainbow Climb by Growing Book by Book
- Rainbow SensoryBin by Tiny Tots Adventures
- Inventing Their Own Songs to Encourage Creativity by Capri + 3
- Rainbow Domino Game by Rainy Day Mum
- Rainbow Patterns with Blocks by Mom Inspired Life
- Scented Rainbow Science and Sensory Play by Fun-A-Day
- Preschool Engineering with Rainbows by Natural Beach Living
- Design a Rainbow Technology Connection by The Educators’ Spin On It
- DisappearingRainbow Colors by Learning to Walk
- Creating Salty Rainbows with Preschoolers by Life Over C’s
- Rainbow Ice and Salt Experiment for Preschool by Powerful Mothering.
Both of these turned out so beautiful! My son would really enjoy this, so I want to give it a try soon!
Those colours are so vibrant and such a fantastic art/science activity for kids.
I love this! We have tried the fishing for ice experiment where they saw the impact salt has on something frozen. This activity would extend their learning. We will have to try it.
This activity is gorgeous to look at and I bet just as fun to do. Can’t wait to try it. We did salt and trucks on ice the other day to show what the trucks put snow on the streets so I know the kids will love this activity too.
This looks amazing!!
I love the fact that you decided to paint the rainbow on the ice. I never would have thought of painting ice. Love it.
What a gorgeous block of ice filled with so much color!! 🙂 This is lovely! I want to try it with my kids.
You should NOT be touching a salt/ice combination. Please google “salt and ice challenge” before you decide to do this activity with your children
Those guys are putting salt ON their bodies then subjecting it to the ice!!! OUCH!
Here the kids are sprinkling salt on the ice and watching. Painting with a paint brush with color. And the occasional poking with a finger AFTER the ice and salt had already reacted.
Thank you for sharing this caution.