Yesterday we learned how to make colour mixing bottles and they are so much fun and really easy to make. I first saw the idea on a wonderful blog called Play Trains and knew we just had to try it, the basic science behind this being that oil and water will always separate. Using oil, water, food colouring, oil based food colouring such as candy colours (This is a food colouring that can be mixed with oil, it is originally made for colouring those little chocolate melts used for baking.) and a water bottle. My sister has been drinking this Fuji water and I really like these bottles because the plastic is a lot sturdier than some of the ones we have so I ended up using those for our project. Fill your water bottle half full of water and add the desired amount of food colouring to the bottle and shake it up. ( This was Grays favourite part.)

In a separate bottle pour in some of the oil of your choice ( Since canola is already a faint yellow it is easy to make yellow based colours.) and add some of the oil based food colouring. At first I tried using a pipe cleaner to stir it in but this was unsuccessful and I ended up using a stick. Honestly looking back all the oil based food colouring really did was end up deepening the yellow and if you don’t mind a bit less vibrant of a yellow and you used canola oil you may not even need the colouring. (If you try this let me know how it works out!) If you plan on colouring the oil other colours however you will need the dye.

Using a funnel (or if your feeling brave just go for it) pour your oil into the water bottle holding your water, it will look pretty cool and eventually separate into two clearly defined colours. I ended up doing the pouring since Gray has somehow developed some deep animosity for the funnel and throws it across the room anytime it gets close to him.

Make sure once you finish you hot glue or tape the lids on so busy hands can’t twist them off. Give it a good shake and you get this!

After our ‘green’ bottle we made this one.

Which once shaken looks like this.

Gray insisted on making our next one with red and blue which look rather pretty but once shaken just makes a sort of murky brown purple.

I also thought we would try one made with olive oil which is green instead of yellow and we coloured the water blue which turned out this.

Once again I would like to stress the importance of gluing the lid on, especially if you plan on putting fun little objects into your bottles like glitter or beads. All in all it was a lot of fun and when he gets a bit older it can help teach him how mixing two colours together can make a whole new colour, but for now they are more of a visual attraction to him than anything, which is fine by me! We hope you enjoyed this post and feel free to ask any questions or share your ideas, we hope you will join us again at Excite and Explore!