Kids in the Kitchen: Glow in the Dark Food, Magic Colors, and Giant Bubbles!

If you’re coming in late, we’re doing back to school week!   Kate’s done 2 great posts about Breakfast on the run, and School Lunches.  And I showed you a fun rainy day recipe for homemade Slime– perfect for entertaining little (and who are we kidding? BIG) hands.  Today I have a little hodge-podge of 3 more kitchen tricks.  This stuff is purely for fun, and for making your kids think you are awesome.

The secret to glowing food is tonic water (diet tonic water works too).  It contains quinine, and guess what happens when you expose quinine to black light?

fun, right??  So if you mix up a drink (like Crystal Light lemonade like I’ve done below) and add a little tonic water…

magical glowing beverages!  (Have I ever mentioned that Kate hates the word “beverage?”  Hey Kate, beverage beverage beverage!! She’s totally hiding under her computer desk right now.)  Pretty much anything you can make that includes water can glow with tonic water.  Like Jello for example:

My kids thought that glowing jello was pretty much the coolest thing ever.

Now tonic water does have a nasty bitter taste to it.  My kids actually didn’t notice at all, which I thought was strange.  Maybe I’m just super sensitive.  I don’t like the flavor, so if you’re like me know that you only need a little to make it glow.  Adding a bit to juice or punch isn’t very noticeable.  And if you do jello, you can use part regular water (half and half, or even less tonic) to minimize the bitter taste.  And if you were wondering, YES you can even use tonic water to make glowing gak!

Think of other creative uses and gather stuff on your kitchen table.  Turn down the lights, flip on a black light, and watch your kids ooh and ahhh as they sip glow in the dark juice and chomp down radioactive jello.

We have an issue in our house with sippy cups.  Every morning I give my boys a lidded cup with milk and every afternoon I find those cups somewhere in the house.  It’s not so old that it’s reached the nasty curdled stage (all you Mom’s know what I’m talking about- right??) but it’s old enough that I don’t want my kids drinking it anymore.  I hate watching it go down the drain, so lately we’ve been using it for play time.  My sister in law Emily told me about this one and I vaguely remember doing it as a kid too!

Place milk in a shallow dish and add some drops of liquid food coloring.

Now grab a *magic* toothpick.  What?  You don’t know where to buy magic toothpicks??  Just dip the end in dish soap 🙂

and let your kiddo touch the milk with it.

The colors instantly shoot out at lightning speed creating a wake of rainbows!  Try dipping the toothpick in the color first and then the milk and you’ll make rings.

Do it a few more times and then just sit back and watch.  As the soap disrupts the surface tension of the milk, the colors dance around all by themselves.  Kind of like a funky kaleidoscope.

Until of course, seconds later your kids can’t contain themselves and they stir it all around making a cloudy brown mess.  Not that I know from experience…

All you need is a kiddie pool, a hoola hoop, some water, and a bunch of dish soap.  And then you can have human sized bubbles.  My boys thought this was SO cool (and so did I!)