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If you have more candy than you know what to do with, try this experiment with your little ones. Sometimes playing with food is inevitable, but with sweet science comes knowledge!Want to learn more about chemistry without the hassle of gathering materials? Explore 11 fun chemistry experiments with a <a href="https://www.kiwico.com/us/store/dp/chemistry-play-lab-project-kit/3971" target="_self">Chemistry Play Lab</a> from the <a href="https://www.kiwico.com/store" target="_self">KiwiCo Store</a>!

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Place the Skittles in a circle around the edge of the plate.

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If you’re feeling adventurous, add some Skittles to the center of the plate too! 

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Fill the measuring cup with warm water. Then, pour the water into the center of the plate until the Skittles are halfway submerged in water. Be careful to not to disturb the Skittles!

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The colorful rainbow effect comes as the candy coating dissolves into the water. The coating is made up almost entirely of sugar with a little bit of food coloring. When the coating dissolves, the sugar and food coloring mix into the water to form a solution, or a chemical mixture with the water.

Solutions like this like to be balanced — if there’s a lot of sugar and food coloring in one part of the water, but not a lot in another, that’s unbalanced. To get balanced, the solution will gradually spread out from areas with more of it (around the candy) to areas with less of it (in the center of the dish) so all parts of the water have about the same amount of sugar and food coloring. That’s what you see happening as the rainbow starts to move away from the candy! Scientists call this process diffusion.

But as you saw, the colors will spread towards each other and then stop, forming a line where they meet. That’s because the spots where they meet have the same overall amount of sugar and food coloring, even though the colors are different. Diffusion won’t mix those solutions together. Well, not right away, at least. Eventually, the food coloring will separate from the sugar to diffuse on its own, and the whole dish will become the same brownish color.

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There are lots of variations you can try to explore what's going on is this experiment. Try placing a single candy in a dish of hot water and one in a dish of cold water. Which candy coating dissolves first? How does the color spread?

Or, try placing just a few candies in the dish, and see where the color goes. How long does it take for the colors combine if you don't disturb the dish? You can also try the same experiment using something other than water, like rubbing alcohol or vegetable oil.

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Have some fun and play with other confectioneries like M&M's or peppermints, for some holiday-themed fun!

skittles

plate

measuring cup

water

peppermints - optional

Skittles Science Fair Project

experiment

science experiment

quick experiment

chemistry

eruptions

physics

indoor project

learning activity

at-home learning

Harness the power of fizzy candy and soda to inflate a balloon without blowing! This experiment can be repeated many times with different sodas to see how each reacts differently and which creates the biggest balloon. 

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Use your funnel (or make one out of rolled paper and tape) to pour the fizzy candy into a balloon. We used Pop Rocks for our candy.

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Open the soda bottle and quickly place the balloon over the bottle opening. Make sure the candy does not go into the soda yet! The balloon may inflate a little because of the escaping gases. 

When you are ready to inflate the balloon, hold onto the balloon at the neck, empty the candy into the carbonated beverage, and watch as it begins to inflate. You should see the soda bubble as the candy reacts inside. If you listen carefully, you may hear small popping sounds! This is the sound of tiny bubbles popping and releasing carbon dioxide. Watch as your balloon starts to grow and expand!

What is going on?
 The fizzy candy that we used was made by mixing up warm, sugary syrup with carbon dioxide gas. As the syrup cooled and hardened into small balls of candy, it trapped little bubbles of carbon dioxide inside. Now, when the candy comes in contact with liquid (in this case the soda), the sugar in the candy dissolves away, and the bubbles of carbon dioxide gas escape and fill up the balloon.
 The soda also contains little bubbles of carbon dioxide gas, which are trapped inside the soda as long as the soda bottle cap is kept on. When you open up the soda bottle, some of the pressure inside the bottle is relieved, and the bubbles in the soda can now escape to the surface. Combining the gas from the fizzy candy and the gas from the opened soda bottle creates quite a lot of freed carbon dioxide, and that’s why the balloon inflates so quickly.

fizzy candy

carbonated beverage

funnel (or piece of paper)

balloon

measuring tape - optional

Fizzy Candy Balloon

Saint Patrick's Day

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My children enjoyed making these fun little "pots of gold" for a St. Patrick's Day play-date at our house. There will be rainbows and shamrocks all over for this fun afternoon!

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We found some fluffy pipe cleaner that made our rainbows very full, but any pipe cleaner will do. 

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We painted our little pots all black and let them dry while we made the rainbows.

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My five-year old twisted all the pipe cleaners together at the ends and fit each finished rainbow into a pot. She loved this part the best!

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We topped each off with some gold coins and we were ready for a fun day of green!

terra cotta pots (mini)

pipe cleaner (in rainbow colors)

black paint

paintbrush

gold coin chocolates

Pot of Gold

Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day crafts

jewelry

food decoration

food play

Learn how to tie a Celtic heart knot. Then use pull and peel licorice rope to make an edible Valentine’s Day treat! 

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Start with the rope. Cross the right end over the left to create a loop. 

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Cross the left end over the right end to create a pretzel shape.

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Bring the right end underneath the left end. 

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Take the left end of the rope and thread it through the left pretzel loop. 

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Take the same end of the rope and thread it up through the middle of the pretzel. 

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Then, down through the right pretzel loop. 

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Slowly and carefully pull both ends to tighten and create the Celtic heart knot.

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Make the knot as many times as you need to to get a hang of it. 

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Peel 3 strips off of your licorice rope and create Celtic heart knots with them. 

Be gentle with the candy! It will pull apart much easier than the rope you practiced with. 

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To make a necklace or a bracelet, lick the ends of the candy and stick them together. 

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If you’re feeling confident, try adding a second strip of candy by threading back through the first knot with a second one! 

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Now your candy treats are ready for gifting! 

rope (2' long)

Scissors

pull and peel licorice rope

Candy Celtic Heart Knot

With Valentine's day quickly approaching there has been a lot of talk about what kinds of sweet treats we will be giving out to friends. M&Ms are a favorite in our house so I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they can also be used to teach lessons on chromatography! Find out how the candy gets to be the color that it is with this super simple experiment!  We used M&Ms, but try different candies, like Skittles or jelly beans. 

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Place white coffee filters on plates (using white filters and plates worked best to allow the color to show through more clearly). Paper towels also worked well for us. Designate one filter for each color.

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Fill a cup with warm water. Pick up an M&M and hold it underwater for a couple of seconds. Drop it back into the coffee filter. Repeat this for all the colors.

Tip: You can also use a straw or pipette to drop warm water over the candy.

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Keep experimenting! The effect can be a bit subtle, so look closely at what happens to the colors as they spread through the filter paper. For some colors of candy, the color on the filter paper will just spread and get lighter as it travels farther from the candy. But other colors of candy usually purple, black, or brown, you'll actually see the smudge on the filter paper separate into different colors. 

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What you're seeing there is the different colors of food dye being separated out. Scientists call this process of separating out the parts of a mixture chromatography. In a lab, this same technique can be used to figure out what a mystery mixture is made of, or to purify a mixture by removing the bits you don't want. This works because the different parts of the mixture move through the filter paper at different rates. If several colors of food dye were used to make your brown candy, the faster-moving colors will appear closer to the edges of the filter, while the slower-moving colors stay closer to the center.  That's why you can see tinges of blue at the edge of the brown coloring.

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We also saw bits of blue coming through our green coloring. What colors did you see in your experiment? Which candies used more than one color of dye? Where you saw color separation, which color moves the fastest? Try testing different materials and candies. We also tried the experiment on paper towels and giant coffee filter paper!

coffee filters

paper towel

m&m's candies

warm water

Candy Chromatography

dessert

treat

sweet snacks

winter

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These chocolate dipping spoons are yummy, easy for kids to make with a little help from a grown-up, and great to give as gifts.  Stir them into a hot beverage and you have an instant burst of chocolate to your coffee or cocoa. 

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First, I got all of my supplies together then melted the milk chocolate in the microwave for 30 seconds, stirred, and then melted it again for 30 seconds. (I did this prep work since I have young kids.) 

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I let the chocolate cool for about 30 seconds, then my kids dipped and swirled their plastic spoons to coat them in chocolate. We put them on a baking sheet covered in wax paper to harden. To speed up this part of the process, put them in the freezer for about 10 minutes. 

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Next, I melted white chocolate chips in the microwave and spooned them into a plastic Ziploc bag.  I secured the zipper and snipped a tiny piece off the corner of the bag, making an impromptu pastry bag.

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Then my kids got to decorating, squeezing the white chocolate in a zig-zag pattern across the milk chocolate on the spoons. Again, we allowed the chocolate to harden.  

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The result was a bunch of yummy and appealing treats. Slip each one into a Ziploc bag and they are ready to be delivered. My kids love giving these out as gifts. 

chocolate chips (1 cup)

white chocolate chips (3 tablespoons)

plastic spoons

wax paper

microwave or double boiler (grown-up use only) (grownup use only)

sandwich bag / small ziplock bag (1 for icing plus more for packaging finished product)

Chocolate Dipping Spoons

Halloween

math games

math

learning game

numbers

Well, if the kids are getting all that candy for Halloween, we might as well learn a little bit of math before we eat it, right? Plus, they think it's fun to compare who got what, so this activity lends a little purpose to the sibling rivalry. We got ready to sort, count, and graph our candy, then analyze our results: most, least, and so on.

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I had the kids work in separate areas so no one's candy got mixed up with anyone else's. Each kid dumped their candy out into a pile. I asked them to make some hypothesis while observing the pile: "Which type of candy do you think you have the most of? The least?" 

Panda Crate

Koala Crate

Kiwi Crate

Atlas Crate

Doodle Crate

Tinker Crate

Maker Crate

Eureka Crate

9 best candy projects for kids

Screen-free fun!