pH ART

A day at Chesterton Primary showing Year 2 kids how to make their own litmus paper using red cabbage.

Chop and boil the cabbage for 10 min, then paint the dark red juice onto blotting paper.  Leave it to dry, or warm very gently in oven.  When it's dry, you can cut it into strips.

Children painting with lemon and bicarb

Use the strips for testing various liquids - try milk, oven cleaner, lemon juice, baking soda, saliva etc.

The children numbered their strips and wrote down what they had tested.  When they went back to class, they did a presentation and explained how some things are acid, some are alkali and some are neutral.

Red cabbage litmus test strips 

At home, we used lemon juice, bicarbonate of soda and tea as finger paints.