Space Jelly Activity

I saw this idea here http://sandradodd.com/strew/tadaa a couple of months ago, and tried it with the vegetarian gelatin substitute that was all Asda had in, but even putting in way more than the directions on the packet said, it failed to make a dome, only a squishy mess! I've found some proper gelatin now though, so we tried again.

We used the Dr Oetker gelatin sheets, and I soaked eight of them in some cold water for a few minutes, then squeezed the excess water out and put the sheets in a pan. I turned the cooker on low and melted them, then added them to a pint of water, stirred it all together, and poured it into a dome-shaped bowl to set in the fridge overnight. 

This morning I tipped the jelly out onto a plate, and got together some liquid food colours and some droppers...

...and they had *such* fun with it! Moppet was fascinated at the colours spreading out inside, Squidge was pretending it was monster blood, and Sprout was excited that he thought that some of it looked like a nebula. He called the whole thing 'space jelly' :)

The end result!

They've all asked if we can do it again, so I'm going to look for a bigger bowl to use as a mould, and also see if we can do an edible version, maybe with lemon jelly? 

Definitely an activity with a seal of approval from these three :)