Wonderful Experiences from Colorful Experiments

There is a buzz inside the library at Pirrung Elementary today. Plastic coverings drape the wood tables, as four plastic cups full of water sit on each. They are accompanied by a bag full of dye tablets and colorful markers. A class of students huddle around attentively on a colorful mat, their attention fixated on their teacher, Ms. Heather Jackson. She is holding a pipette in one hand and a cup full of clear water in the other.

Make no mistake, a very fun learning experience is about to begin.

Jackson explains the activity, then students pair off in groups of four and take a seat at their table. The teachers hand each student a dye tablet to drop into their cup of water. Within seconds of dropping their tablets into the water, the students are excited as they begin to notice colors of blue, red, and yellow beginning to rise and fill their cups full of color, and within the minute, each of their cups is a new color!

Next, just as Jackson demonstrated earlier, they use their pipettes to combine the water from their cup with water from other cups. Colors of orange, green, and purple begin to form! The students compare their colorful cups with each other, and then they color the boxes in their worksheet with their observations.

Finally, as an additional souvenir from the experience, each student places a crystal in their cup. At the end of the day, the crystal will be dyed with the color from their cup for them to take home and show their parents/guardians.

Needless to say, the experiment was a hit with Jackson’s class.

“My students loved being able to be handson and actively engaged in the lesson. They were the ones mixing the colors using pipettes, instead of having to watch from their seat. They were controlling their own learning! They liked being scientists and completing a fun colorful experiment," Jackson explained.

She got the idea for this activity after attending the Region 10 Science in the Classroom workshop, which featured the one and only Steve Spangler. Spangler, a STEM expert and Emmy Award-winning TV personality, holds a world record for the largest physics lesson, and is an inductee in the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame.

“I attended the Virtual Now4Forever Conference and [Spangler] was my favorite presenter! I am always looking for ways to continuously learn and grow, and who doesn’t want to attend fun engaging professional development?" Jackson asked. "After the conference, Region 10 sent an email letting us know that he was going to have a workshop and I could not pass up the opportunity to experience his presentation in person."

Spangler presentations are not your typical workshops. Rather than follow a handout, participants worked out of a box of hands-on activities. From windbags to slime to colorful dye, the room buzzed with excitement and laughter during the whole session, just as Jackson’s classroom did in the library.

“He is so energetic and he keeps you hooked the whole time he is presenting! I can’t say I had a favorite part because it was all amazing! I enjoyed the hands-on experiments and the fact that he did not follow along with a handout,” Jackson shared. “If I had to choose a favorite experiment, I would have to say the color mixing activity was my favorite, because we were witnessing the colors change right in front of our eyes!”

Jackson’s biggest takeaway from the workshop was the importance of keeping students engaged, and she knew the color mixing activity would fit well with her students’ learning.

“My biggest takeaway was how important it is to keep students engaged and active during the learning process. When students are actively engaged, it holds them responsible for their learning and they are more successful,” she shared. “Students learn about colors in Pre-K, so it was a perfect way to teach colors, as well as showing them how primary colors mix together to make secondary colors. Instead of just telling them about colors and having them identify the color of objects, they were able to be hands-on and ‘make’ colors.”

“This was a memorable experience that my students still talk about and ask to do again!” For Spangler, the experiences created by these hands-on activities are a very powerful teaching tool, something he emphasizes during his session.

“There is nothing more powerful in a teacher’s arsenal than experiences,” Spangler said. “When we get together in a group like this, we are really focused on ‘how do we connect and engage with students to create unforgettable experiences?’ because experiences change the way kids see, feel, think, and react.”