Science on the Light Box: Oil and Colored Water

Light Box Science: Oil and Colored Water

I grabbed one light box and the translucent tray to go on top. I also got out some cooking oil, food coloring, and four 2 oz squeeze bottles filled about halfway with water and gathered the children around the light box on the kitchen floor.

I asked them what happens when you mix food coloring with water. They replied that the water gets colored. "True," I said. "So, water and food coloring mix well together?" They agreed. We then colored each of the four bottles a different color.

Then I poured enough oil into the tray to completely cover the bottom and let them touch and explore the texture of the oil. After a few minutes I asked them what they thought would happen when we put the colored water in the oil. They guessed that the oil would "get colored." I said said, "Let's see." I put a few drops in and we talked about how water and oil don't mix well and so the droplets of water stay suspended in the oil. Then I just let them play. They had so much fun.

They were tentative at first, getting the feel for the squeeze bottles (it was the first time we used them) but soon the tray began to fill with tiny droplets of colored water. It was quite pretty.

They discovered they could make their dots bigger by putting several drops in the same place and even blend colors by using two or more colors in the same dot.

We found we could make two dots side by side that were "friends" until one inevitably got too pushy and absorbed the other. That was a very cool effect and the kids reproduced it many times.

Finally, before cleaning up, I let them get their hands back in. Ava just enjoyed the sensory experience. Michael noticed he could disturb all the big dots and make them into itty bitty tiny ones and enjoyed destroying every big dot he could find.

Cleanup was as easy and rinsing the tray out and then using dishwashing liquid to get the oil residue out of the tray so it would be ready for the next experiment.

Light Table Fingerpainting and Prints

In honor of all the people stopping by from ohdeedoh.com to check out how we made our homemade light boxes, I'm doing a post about another activity we did on our boxes.

Light Table Fingerpainting and Prints

Our light boxes are made from plastic storage bins, so we can get messy on them without worrying about damaging them at all so we didn't need to start by protecting the table. I began by filling an ice cube tray with blue, yellow, red liquid tempera paints. Then we mixed green, purple, and orange as well. At that point I sat back and watched the kids explore finger painting on the light boxes. They began conservatively with one finger and small dots and smears. They worked up to multi-finger rainbows and two-handed smearing of the entire surface.

Then, to continue their interest in the project I taught them how to make prints by pressing pieces of white tagboard onto the light table and then peeling them back up. They loved it. They explored different color combinations and patterns and compared the results before deciding on their next experiment.

We didn't stop until we ran out of time and the kitchen was pretty much a disaster. However, as messy as it looked, the paint rinsed right off of the lids of the bins and out of the ice cube tray in about 5 minutes. Then I let everything dry and picked it all up at once. So the cleanup didn't take long at all.

As a side note, I have succeeded in getting Ava so used to painting that she now doesn't hesitate to dive into paint with her fingers as long as she has a towel nearby to frequently wipe her fingers with. Big sensory/OT success there.

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More Light Table Activities

Light Table Sand Art

We took a shallow translucent box and sprinkled some colored sand (of the type used to fill sand art bottles)on the bottom. We placed that box on one of our homemade light boxes. It was beautiful. Then we used our fingers to draw in the sand. The children loved it. They played over half an hour making designs on their own. We tried two different colors.

When they tired a bit of playing on their own I decided on a whim to use it to illustrate a story. I told the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. When we talked about the three bowls of porridge I made a table and one small bowl in the sand, one medium one, and one large one. I did the same for the three chairs and the three beds. The children loved it! Then I attempted a modified version of Hansel and Gretel and we made a trail of breadcrumbs through the sand forest. It was a nice language arts extension activity for the sand art on the light table.

Light Table Silly Spheres

I'm not sure what to call these. We got ours from a teacher supply store and they were called Slippery Spheres (I think). I called them silly spheres with the children. I think they are the same thing you can buy at craft stores that some people use to fill vases. Ours were tiny little plastic beads that absorb water until they are something like 100 times their original size. I got them because I thought they would work well with the light table and they would be a good sensory experience for Ava.

Eventually I want to work up to making a lot of them and having the children actually submerge their hands in them, but I started slow. This first time we just took a few of each color and watched to see what would happen to them if we put them in water. Once they were finished growing they were cool and wet and squishy. They bounced if dropped onto the light box. The kids would let them "swim" in their cups and then dig them out with their fingers and play with them on the light table for a while before returning them to their cups to swim some more. Michael liked to pretend that they were alive and tiny creatures he was taking care of. Ava accidentally squeezed one too hard and squished it. We threw that one away.

Supposedly you can leave them out to dry and they will return to their original state for you to use again in the future. 8 hours later, ours are only a little smaller. I'm beginning to wonder if that part is actually true. Even if not, it was still a great activity and I'm looking forward to revisiting it with a greater quantity of the silly spheres next time.