One perfect simple science and math activity for your kids to do this summer is the M&Ms Rainbow Experiment. Such a fun twist to teach numbers, colors, shapes and patterns. There is actually more to it, because it is science, like how sugar dissolves with warm water, but I didn’t go into that anymore because my son didn’t have a science subject when he was in first grade.
What you will need: M&Ms, Warm Water, and White Plate (not paper)
Let your kid have fun arranging the M&Ms in a pattern around the edge of the plate. Your kid can arrange it in different shape border and create a pattern. We did the rainbow pattern.
Pour water into the center of the plate, after a few seconds, the colors will begin to move towards the center of the plate. Do not move or shake the plate as it would mess it up, just like when Coco blew his on our project. You can talk to your child with what happened with the water and M&Ms.
It took around 2-3 minutes before the dissolved colors reached the middle of the plate. As you can also see from our end, our rainbow kind of deformed because Coco blew it on one side.
Science behind it?
The hard shell that covers the chocolate of an M&M’s is made up of sugar and colored dye. When warm water mixes with the sugary shell, the sugar dissolves, so the colors stars to run and blend. Remember M&Ms tag line, melts in my mouth, not in my hand? Well, our saliva is warm, so when we eat a piece and just let it there in our tongue for a while, the shell will melt. Check out solute and solvent! When a solute (sugar) is placed in solvent (water), it dissolves into another substance, which is the solution. The colors of the M&Ms is just to show that sugar dissolved. Think of your hot cup of coffee!
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