Gumdrop Science Melting Candy Experiment

Exploring Change with Heat

Gumdrop science is especially fun because it’s all about candy! Perfect any time of the year, but we chose Christmas time to experiment with gumdrop science activities. We have already used them for gumdrop bridge building activities {awesome STEM play}! Exploring change with young kids is so much fun and so easy to do! Simple dissolving experiments like our Christmas candy dissolving activity and our Peppermint Oobleck science sensory play are a real hit and use up some extra candy! Christmas science activities make early learning fun and novel! Explore solids and changes to solids with heat in our easy gumdrop science activity!

Gumdrop Science Set Up

Science concepts to explore: What is a solid? What happens when we heat a solid? Can it change back? Make sure to ask lots of questions and give your child time to observe and compare what are you presenting to them. Make sure to provide an opportunity to explore both the un-heated and heated gumdrops {safely of course}.

Don’t forget to grab your FREE set of Christmas STEM challenge cards…

Supplies Needed:

gumdrops big or small {we had both leftover from our bridge building activity}
cookie sheet
aluminum foil
metal cookie cutters or even mason jar lids!

Set up: Line a cookie tray with aluminum foil and place cookie cutters on it. Fill in the cookie cutters with your gumdrops. We did not smooth them in but we filled the spaces completely or as best we could. Go crazy, make patterns! Practice colors! This was a true experiment since I had no idea what would happen! Preheat oven to 350 degrees and pop your tray in! We explored change through heat, similar to our Halloween melting candy experiment, but we gave it a Christmas twist!

I checked the gumdrops frequently but soon noticed that this was going to take a bit longer then I thought. I didn’t have to worry to much about burning them. After about 10 mins I took the tray out and we had a look. There was no visible change from the top and they had not started melting into each other. I thought our gum drop science was a bust. I decide to use the back of a small spoon to press on them and see what happened. They flattened very easily, so there was change! He noticed how easy it was to flatten it out {let your child try if you feel it is safe enough, tray is very hot}. He could not flatten out an un cooked one nearly as easily. I popped it back in for another five minutes.

Our gumdrop science still had potential! After another 5 minutes there still wasn’t anymore noticeable change from the top, so I decided to flip them over! Look what we found {above}. Our gumdrop science project looked very pretty, and he thought it was pretty neat that the change was on the bottom all along! We let them cool and then I popped them out carefully and put them in the window!