Farm Science ~ Milk Experiment

I'm always doing art projects with Jaxon but decided that we needed to mix it up a bit and try something different for a change. I'm hoping that by doing some fun hands-on experiments, I can encourage Jaxon to get excited about science! To keep w/ the "farm" theme, we chose an experiment that uses milk. This a very PreSchooler friendly project that once again uses ingredients that can be found in your kitchen.

You will need...

• a shallow dish



• 1/2 a cup of room temperature milk



• food coloring



• a few drops of dish soap

• Q-Tips

Find a cookie sheet or other shallow dish and set it on the table. This experiment works best with a shallow dish. (I used a small frying pan.)

Pour a half a cup of room temperature milk into the shallow dish. If you get the milk directly from the refrigerator then you can microwave the milk to room temperature. Make sure your preschooler can see the milk easily in the shallow dish.

Squirt the food coloring around various spots of the milk. It's best to keep the colors close for this experiment. Take a Q-Tip and dip it into the dish soap and touch it to the milk on the sections with the food coloring. Hold it there for a few seconds, approximately 5 to 10.

Remove the Q-Tip and notice the continuous swirls going on even without the Q-Tip.
Dip the Q-Tip in the dish soap again and then touch the milk to continue the swirls.

We swirled and swirled our colors until they had all mixed together. It was fun to see the expression on his face when the soap touched the food color for the first time! During our experiment we talked about where the milk that we used came from and why he thought that cow's milk was white not green!