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Get colorful with this easy frozen rainbow science experiment for kids! Your kids will get to literally touch the rainbow, right at home.
Any kid who loves rainbows will adore this easy-peasy frozen rainbow science experiment!
And my daughter is super into rainbows right now. Everything gets colored like a rainbow.
A Colorful Frozen Rainbow!
To put together your own easy frozen rainbow science experiment, you will need:
- food coloring
- water
- a transparent freezer-safe container
- a cup
- a freezer
- plastic or rubber gloves (optional)
Check out these colorful rainbow activities for kids!
First, fill a cup with some water. Then, add red food coloring to this cup.
Next, pour that red water into your transparent or translucent freezer-safe container.
A container you can see through will help you see how much of each color you are adding.
However, if you want it to be more of a surprise big reveal at the end, use an opaque container. Just make sure to measure out your liquid ahead of time.
Remember that you will need to add six more layers after this, so don’t add too much. We ended up pouring in about an inch of each color.
Now, put the whole thing, just with the red water, in the freezer for at least 24 hours.
When it is frozen solid, you can repeat the above process with orange food coloring instead of red.
Then, repeat the whole process again with green, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet. Freeze each new layer solid overnight before you add the next color.
In total, this will take you about 6 days to create. You’ll need some advance planning to pull this off.
In the meantime, go on a rainbow toy color scavenger hunt.
When the final layer is frozen solid, it is time to slide it out of the container!
Play with the Frozen Rainbow!
I loved my son’s reaction to this moment. He was thrilled with the results!
Our purple layers didn’t work out as well as we had hoped. If we did this again, we would try extra hard to get a true purple color!
If your kids want to play with their frozen rainbow, you may want to have them use plastic or rubber gloves.
Of course, it will start to melt, but that’s OK. You can just do the experiment all over again!
While we prepped for and played with our freezer rainbow science experiment, we talked (of course) about actual rainbows and colors. It was also a great time to practice mixing.
As we created each colorful layer, we experimented with adding more drops of coloring.
We also talked about:
- Which color would be strongest?
- Which color would be the lightest?
- How fast do you think the ice rainbow will melt?
- Which layer would melt the fastest? Or would that not matter?
Another fantastic rainbow science experiment is our magic milk experiment.
What science experiments for preschoolers have you had fun with lately?
We would love to hear your great ideas! Here’s a fantastic colorful erupting experiment from Little Bins for Little Hands.