Melissa did a canvas painting activity, children did painting using paint brushes by mixing different colors together and made it a beautiful piece of art. The children got excited to choose the paint colors while doing painting and asked, “Can I use this Colour?” “Can I mix these two Colours together?” They excitedly showed it to everyone by saying, “We did this,” while it was hung up on the wall.
This gave Jaspreet an idea to create a provocation with mixing two different things together to see the results. She thought how will children react when they mix colored water with oil? So, she gathered all the materials needed for the activity which included baby oil, different food colours added to water, some droppers and empty bowls.
Children got excited looking at the droppers and coloured water and asked Jaspreet if they can have a turn? Jaspreet called the first group to explore to see if they could mix oil and water together or not? Alex, Leena, Emily, Frankie, Otis and Stefan were in the first group. Jaspreet showed them oil and asked, “Can anyone tell me what is this?” Alex said, “This is water.” Then Jaspreet told them that this is baby oil and also showed them coloured water. Emily seemed curious and asked, “What are we going to do with them today?” Then Jaspreet said, “We will see if we can mix them together in a bowl or not?” They all got excited and chose their favorite coloured water to try putting it into the oil with their droppers. Emily chose the red one and put one drop of water into the oil. She said, “Look! It mixed with water.” Then everyone else in the group tried putting the water drops in the oil to mix them with oil. Then they asked to switch coloured water with each other when Jaspreet asked them, “What happens when we mix two colours together in the oil?” Emily and Stefan mixed red and green colours and transformed it into a new colour. Emily said, “This turned into brown.” Otis and Frankie mixed red and blue colours together. Alex and Leena mixed green and blue together.
Then Jaspreet asked everyone, “Can anyone tell me if oil and water mixed together or not?” Alex said, “Yes, it is.” Then Jaspreet took the bowl mixed with oil and water and showed it to all of them. She pointed at the separate layer of oil at the top of the bowl and separate layer of coloured water at the bottom of the bowl and showed it to them. They looked at it first and then looked into their own bowls in which they put the water with the help of droppers. Stefan stirred the water in the bowl with his dropper to mix them together again and then said, “It’s not mixing.” Then Jaspreet explained to them that oil and water are different liquids and they do not mix together because water molecules are attracted to the water and oil molecules are attracted to the oil.
Jack, Theo, Brody, Clementine, Stéphane and Lincoln were in second group. They also chose their coloured to mix them with the oil. Stéphane first chose red colored water and then added green to it. He observed that it turned into black. Then Jaspreet asked again “did the oil and water mix together in their bowls?" Jack said, “yes.” So once again Jaspreet demonstrated that the water and oil did not mix.
Through this experiment, children learned why oil and water cannot mix together.
