Pipettes! Ice Cube Scientists!

My children love playing at being scientists and my son especially adores pipettes. We got him a bundle of pipettes for about £2 on eBay one birthday and he was more excited about those than his big presents! We keep some in the cutlery drawer to use with food, some with the bath toys and some in our painting & messy play box.

A quick and easy activity that the kids have asked to do again is 'inventing ice cubes'. I give them a pipette each, a few small bowls with different coloured drinkable liquids in (different squashes, fruit juices & water) and some empty ice cube trays. They have so much fun using the pipettes to mix the colours in the trays and making predictions as to what colour they'll make with each combination. We then freeze them and the next day they'll select which colour ice cube they want in their drink of water. More predictions and fascination seeing what happens when they have two different coloured cubes in the same glass!

We also use the ice cubes for potions - see my Summertime potion post for an example.