Oil Spill in a Bottle

(Open ended play)

We decided to introduce water pollution with yet another oil spill activity.

It is a really fun but simple enough for a 2.5 years old. This hands-on activity teaches kids about how oil spills effects and how difficult they are to clean up.

Materials:

-bottle with lid, we used a glass one

-blue water, we used food coloring for the blue color

-vegetable oil, we used grapeseed oil

-add on: corriander seeds, mustard seeds, a tiny toy car

-a funnel

Instruction:

-ask your kiddo to pour in the water and oil into the bottle using a funnel if necessary

-ask your kiddo to sprinkle the add on into the bottle

-secure the lid

Y led this activity from start to finish.

First she poured in the water and oil into the bottle. Pouring is essentially fun activity for young kids. As always, Y loves her collapsible funnel.

I would advise to secure the lid with some kind of super glue, but Y was pretty cooperative under my supervision. That was why we didn’t glue it. Downside? I have to fully focus to supervise and no photos of her while playing.

We had work with waves in a bottle two days ago, so she instantly would like to shake the bottle without me asking any question. The bottle was shaken vigorously.

She stared in amazement. She pointed at the oil layer that was there and for a time it was rather (temporarily) mixed. The upper bottle wall went blurry instead of transparent anymore as it was due to oil leftover. She seemed intrigued to clean the oil maybe because it blocked her view by further shaking the bottle to no avail. Most items didn’t sink through the oil, instead they stayed floating in the oil. They stayed in their ‘bubble’ as the bottle gets shaken. A few mustard seeds made another bubble and sank to bottom of the bottle when it was laid down.

She was not overly excited with oil’s existence in her bottle, which exactly the point for this little experiment. The she realized something, “Car!” Her tiny car was in there, trapped in oil. “Help me! Help me!” she said, while lifting up the bottle towards me.

The play time was over, I opened the lid and poured the bottle’s content out to the tray. She grabbed her car and ran to the kitchen sink while saying “wash.”

She was totally irritated with how oily her car was. I offered my help to wash her toys (and also hands) with soap. It took us about four or five times washing (water-soap-rub-water) on repeat until that tiny car was felt clean on our touch.

In the future perhaps we’ll dig more about oil spill by read-aloud session or any other hands on activities both indoor and outdoor, but for our 2.5 years old this deceptively simple ‘sensory bottle’ had given her a large emotional impact. At the very least I now know that she knows how to be conscious.

#oil #spill #bottle #sensory #toddler