Age:
3 and up
What you need:
- Shaving cream
- Food coloring or liquid watercolor
- Water
- Clear container
- Dropper
This is a great activity to work on the scientific process with your little one.
How to:
1- Pour water in the clean container
2- Put the shaving cream on top of the water. Make sure to create a good layer of shaving cream over the water.
3- Give your child an explanation of what they will be doing next and ask them what they think will happen. This is their hypothesis. Write it down on a piece of paper to revisit at the end of the experiment.
4- Give them watercolor and the dropper and ask them to gently start putting drops on top of the shaving cream. Give them time and space to continue doing this as they observe what happens.
5- You can ask them:
- What is happening
- Do you see the colors seeping through the shaving cream?
- Are the colors mixing?
- Is the color moving fast or slow?
6- When the experiment is done go back to your child hypothesis. Read the hypothesis back to them and ask them if they were correct. Ask them to tell you what happened. It is important they understand that a hypothesis is an educated guess and so that getting it incorrect is perfectly fine.
Objective:
This is a great way to work on the scientific process and work on following direction. Allowing them to go through a process step by step and seeing the results is a great way to also teach patients and observation. You could teach this as a cloud experiment like many do BUT this is not necessary.
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