Water is essential, ubiquitous, and useful in all walks of life. However, water can also be used to create real magic. If your children are on school holidays and you want to both inform and entertain them, there’s more than a few magical things you can do to get the little ones interested in what comes out of the tap.

Magic Tricks to Truly Inspire

There’s a number of simple magic tricks for children that they will simply adore! One such trick is the anti-gravity water trick. No experience required, and mastering the trick only takes a little practice. You need a glass, a cloth, and some water to pull it off.

For the trick itself:

1. Place the cloth over the glass.
2. Use your hand to push a depression into the fabric. This is so you can more easily fill the glass and also helps wet the material.
3. Fill the glass about three-quarters full of water.
4. Pull the fabric tightly over the glass.
5. You have two choices here. You can quickly flip the glass, using a hand to hold the fabric tight. Alternatively, you can put one hand over the top of the glass, while using the other to hold the material tight and slowly invert the glass. Pull the hand over the glass away.

For more awesome tricks, head over to ThoughtCo.

Colouring Water

Young children respond well to bright primary colours. One way of getting them enthused about water is to add food dye to their paddling pool. Some bright pink or green is sure to delight them.

Another brilliant idea is for kids to learn about colours and how to blend and form new ones. Using a few glass mason jars, some water and a selection of food dyes, you have your own colour laboratory.

Writing in Happy Hooligans, mum Jackie has come up with some ingenious playtime ideas using coloured water. It may look like simple fun, but your children’s brains will be working hard and there’ll be an awful lot of development going on here:

“It looks like child’s play, but there is so much brain and body development happening here. Little hands are learning how to grasp and carry wet and sometimes heavy containers without spilling or dropping. Through trial and error, they’re figuring out how to pour just the right amount to fill a container, controlling then slowing and finally stopping the flow.  And they discover what happens when there’s an overflow.”

To take the science of water a little further for children, over on YouTube Genevieve’s Playhouse has an awesome idea of creating colour sensory bottles using different vegetable dyes. In the video the guys show us how to make awe-inspiring colour changing sensory bottles, with a just a handful of simple ingredients. These colourful bottles are half one colour and half another, and when you shake them it creates a wondrous blend.