Kid Science: Melting vs. Freezing

Here’s a fun experiment to help kids understand that salt makes ice melt. The scientific concept is the melting point, where salt affects the freezing point of ice and turns it back into water. But if that’s too complicated for your little one, this experiment makes it easy: Take ice, add salt, and use food coloring to see how quickly the water melts.

The super-simple steps:

1. Place ice in a container with a rim so that melting water will be contained. Sprinkle salt on top.

2. As the ice melts, add drops of food coloring.

3. Add other colors, so that you can watch them mix as even more water melts.

You can experiment with other shapes of ice and varying amounts of salt to see if you get different results!