What happens when you add heat to the mix?

Last week the children were able to go crazy mixing in whatever ingredients they wanted, in whatever quantities they felt necessary. We wanted them to really experiment with, and observe, chemical change in action. This week we wanted to keep building on their learning and develop their thinking a little more by adding heat! So, using a play dough recipe as the basis for our “oogily googily” bake week, the children and the grown-ups got to work following their recipe and mixing up their ingredients. Each of the children were then able to choose what colour they wanted to make their play dough and, let me tell you, there was some awesome colours blended as the children got very creative mixing the different dyes.

As the children were mixing their play dough we talked to them about the changes they saw happening. Asking them how the mixture felt at the beginning when it was just the dry ingredients in the bowl. . .  to when the oil and boiling water were added later on. We got some more great language, such as; “Its soft” and “Its fluffy” to “Its sticky all over my hands” and “Its squishy”.

The children were then asked to take a small portion of their play dough and mould it into the shape of the letter their name starts with. They all did really well, and the letters looked fabulous in all of the bright colours. We then placed all of the letters on the baking tray to put in the oven and waited to see what would happen to them when even more heat was put on them. The children were very excited to see their letters come out of the oven harder and a little bigger than when they had gone in!

We talked about the idea that liquid heat helps combine the ingredients while dry heat (like in the oven) helps dry out the ingredients. The children really seem to be grasping the idea that different ingredients and heat, create different changes.