Post contains affiliate links (marked with *)
When we first got the Tuff Tray* I didn’t really know what to do with it. Honestly, I think I was a bit overwhelmed by seeing all of these Instagram perfect trays. I am really not all that creative and I also didn’t want to spend loads of money on really cool and interesting accessories. So, recently I put together a really easy Tuff Tray for Erin based on her favourite subject; Science!
What you’ll need:
Empty plastic bottles
Food colouring
Water
Science equipment (such as beakers, test tubes etc.)
Spoons
Any additional items your child might want to mix into the water. We used sugar, salt and flour.
For this Tuff Tray I only used things we already had at home so there wasn’t any added expense and it also didn’t take a lot of time to set up. For a few weeks I had been saving up plastic bottles from things like drinks, fabric softener and ketchup to use in this activity. I filled the bottles up with water and added a small amount of food colouring to each. We only had blue, red and yellow and home and 4 bottles so I used these colours as well as making a purple bottle as well.
To add to the coloured water I gathered together as much of our science equipment as I could find. We have a great set from Learning Resources* that includes test tubes and beakers as well as a dropper and tweezers so we had nearly everything we needed from there. You can really make this as big or small as you want depending on how much equipment you already have.
Erin immediately got all of the water bottles open and got to work on seeing what she could do with mixing the colours. Erin very carefully made sure she had just the right amount of water in each test tube or beaker. It didn’t take her long to make green, which she was really excited about.
After spending some time mixing colours of water and moving it around, with the help of a dropper, spoons and pouring, Erin wanted to up the ‘science’ game. What Erin loves most about science is being able to make her own experiments and mix things together. At this point she requested some additional items to make things a bit more interesting. This I hadn’t planned for but we quickly got together some sugar, flour and salt from the kitchen and this meant that Erin spent a lot longer with this activity.
Although this is one of the most simple Tuff Trays we have done recently it’s probably the one Erin has enjoyed the most. She is always asking to be allowed to mix random things together but this way we were able to work it into some learning at home by talking about the things she was doing and what might happen as a result.