I received a kit from Steve Spangler Science back in July and every single member of the family has been able to enjoy playing with the kit! I signed up for the Steve Spangler Science newsletter a while back and receive emails with an Experiment of the Week and I’m always so impressed by the fun and unique experiments they have. I’m going to tell you about our experience with a SICK science kit!
This kit was all about Vanishing Jelly Marbles. Sounds pretty cool, right? These marbles started out as tiny little balls that you place in the water and watch them grow.
We checked on them every couple of hours and observed them growing. They feel super cool when you pick them up. But then you put them back into the cup of water and they disappear almost completely!
The first thing I did after the Vanishing Jelly Marbles grew big was let Owen play with them and experiment. What little boy wouldn’t love to play with water and marbles?? And of course we turned the water blue for him… He had so much fun!
He transferred the marbles and water back and forth from the tray to the cup… back and forth. It was super cool when he dropped the marbles in the tray with the blue water because they would vanish as soon as the ripples stopped.
After a while, the marbles sucked all the blue out of the water and the marbles actually turned blue! After the marbles turned blue, we used the marbles for a Cool Water Sensory bin that both Lanae and Owen absolutely loved playing with…
The crazy thing is after the marbles sat in the Cool Water Sensory bin the water leached all the blue dye back out of the marbles and into the water. So once again the marbles were clear. Seriously, so crazy!
Another day we grew some more marbles and used the vanishing marbles to write some hidden messages. I actually wrote them by myself so they were hidden love notes to Scott… First I put the clear marbles in the tray without water. Wrote a little message and then put the tray over the top. The marbles distorted the message completely so you couldn’t tell what it said at all.
Then I slowly poured the water into the tray. As it filled up with water, the message slowly became visible and the marbles vanished. I used this opportunity to send a little thank you to my husband! He was more impressed by the marbles distorting the image than my actual note!
After all the hidden messages, I showed Lanae the little fizzing color changing tablets. She decided she wanted to turn the water and marbles purple. It was really neat watching the water slowly turn purple. Now we have purple marbles!! We tossed the purple marbles into our little kiddie pool and the kids collected them in their little cups.
We decided that we wanted to watch the marbles shrink, so we laid them out flat onto a cookie sheet and over the next couple weeks watched them dry up and become little tiny marbles. Then we drenched them in water again and watched the purple marbles grow again… The grew much faster the second time around.
I love how many parts to this kit there were. There were so many different experiments that we were able to do and see really neat results! Even though my kids are small, they still enjoyed watching the cool things that the marbles did! I also love finding out the science behind all the little tricks. You can check out the Vanishing Marbles kit and learn about some of the science behind the kit!
What do you think the trick behind the marbles is??
I love water beads so much! We always have fun with them.
This looks like so much fun! Adding this to our list of Homeschool Science experiments.
I’ve just recently heard of these jelly marble things and they sound fun, but what I really loved was you hidden message idea!!
I’ve never heard of jelly marbles, but they sound like a lot of fun!
What a great sensory tool! Love it 🙂
Oh that is clever! I’m pinning this so I can give it a try 🙂
Wow, what a fun project. My kids love playing in the water.
These look like so much fun. Pinning.
What a fantastic and super fun science experiment! Pinning 🙂