St. Patrick's Day Science Lab
A fun, free activity for kids
Teaching preschool this year has given me lots of excuses to be a little extra when it comes to crafts and other kid activities. But without fail, my older kids come home and ask to do the same activities that I just did with my preschoolers! So this St. Patrick's Day I decided to put together a few fun activities for them, and this science lab activity was a HIT. And good news- you can do all of this with stuff you (probably) have at home. Keep reading for more!
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Science for all ages
The hardest part of these activities is trying to cater them to all my kids. They range from 3 years to 8 years old, and they are all at such different stages of learning. This turned out to be a really fun and simple idea that kept all of them engaged, which is a huge win in my book!
What you Need
Let's break this into two parts... we'll call it "being extra" and "surviving". Because I think you can do fun kid activities no matter which stage you're in. So...
Being Extra:
- Food Coloring (red, yellow, blue)
- Pipettes (we use these so much!)
- St. Patricks Pots (we got these from Dollar Tree)
- Baking Soda
- Vinegar
Surviving:
- Food Coloring (red, yellow, blue)
- Cups, Bowls, whatever you've got
- Baking Soda
- Vinegar
The Activity... Finally!
A little prep first: click the "download" button below, and print off the two pages for this activity. Or, grab some notebook paper and list 1-10 on each page. Mark each pot (or cup, bowl, whatever you're using) with a number 1-10. Now, you'll just put a couple drops of food coloring in the bottom of each pot, and cover it with some baking soda so you can't see the color. Make sure you write down which colors you used on your "key" paper.
Then fill 3 cups with vinegar and add red to one, yellow to one, and blue to the last. If you don't have pipettes, you can use medicine droppers, or simply pour a little bit of the color.
Have them observe what color it turns and deduce what the first color must have been. (If you added red and it turned orange, it must have been yellow.) The real trick is when they add the same color and have to figure out what that means!
A couple rules we used:
- Take turns.
- Each kid had to try each color once.
- No touching the pots to try to see the color before you've added your vinegar color.
That's it!
In the end, we checked their answers against my answer key. This turned out to be such a fun and simple activity for each of my kids, and it was so cute seeing them work together. And as an added bonus, my son pointed out that these pots of gold look like witch's cauldrons, so guess what we'll be doing for Halloween?
