Morah Emily Menashe started this month’s EC STEM unit on color with Morah Helena’s nursery class. Her first experiment focused on chromatography. Morah Emily drew a line of color with a marker on special filter paper and dipped the paper in water. This allowed the different colors that make up the ink to separate, and the students could see what colors were in the markers. The students were amazed to discover yellow in the green marker, purple in the blue marker and a brownish-red tint in the black marker.

In the next experiments, the students observed color movement in chemistry-related activities. Morah Emily poured milk into a pan and added drops of food coloring. When she added dish soap, a reaction caused the colors to swirl, filling the pan with tie-dye patterns.

The final experiment was creating a fizzing rainbow using baking soda, drops of food coloring and vinegar. The students watched as Morah Emily dropped vinegar onto the baking soda and food coloring, noting how the colors mixed and resembled fireworks.