Corpus Christi

In Nursery we have been exploring farm animals and new life as we enter spring time. As part of understanding the world, we explored lots of different animals that live on the farm. The children were brilliant at using their phonics knowledge and identified lots of farm animals using some clues. The biggest clues that gave the animal away was the initial sound of the animal such as ‘this animal likes to be muddy, it’s name begins with the sound – p’.

Throughout our exploration of farm animals, we discovered the amazing fact that cow produced milk and the milk belongs to the ‘dairy’ family.
We then experimented with the milk to make ‘magic milk potions’.
We poured some milk into a tray and added drops of food colouring. The children observed that nothing really happened to the milk when the food colouring was added other than coloured spots appeared.

We then dipped the end of a cotton bud into some washing up liquid and placed it next to one of the drops of food colouring. The children were amazed to watch the two mixtures react, making the food colouring move through the milk making streams of colour. 

The washing up liquid weakened the chemical bonds between fat and protein (milk is made up of lots of this!) The fat and protein are attracted to the soapy molecules – we add food colouring to help us see the movement. Once all the molecules bonded in the streams, the colour explosions stop. 

As you can see, we ended up with some very colourful milk.