Make Monster Eyes

This Halloween monster craft for kids turns a paper plate, white school glue, food coloring, and dish soap into monster eyes with creepy, spiky pupils. Tap each pupil with a soapy cotton swab and watch the color crawl outward on its own.

 

Materials you’ll need

• paper plate
• black marker
• white school glue
• liquid food coloring
• cotton swab
• dish soap

 

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Draw a big monster mouth on the paper plate with a black marker. Go wild with the teeth.

Step 2: Squeeze 2 wide, thick puddles of white school glue above the mouth for the eyes.

Step 3: Add 1 drop of food coloring to the center of each glue eye to make the pupils.

Step 4: Dip a cotton swab in dish soap and gently tap the center of each pupil. Watch the color creep outward into spiky monster eyes.

Step 5: Make more monster faces and try a different food coloring color on each one, like red or purple.

Learn more

This project runs on surface tension, the pull between molecules at the top of a liquid that makes the surface act like a stretchy skin. Dish soap is a surfactant, which means it lowers the surface tension right where it touches. The glue farther from the soap still pulls harder, so it tugs the surface outward and drags the food coloring along for the ride. Glue is much thicker than water, so the color creeps instead of racing, branching into spiky shapes as it goes.

If your monster eyes were a hit, keep the Halloween science going with 10 Spooky Science Experiments for Kids Ages 5 and Up. Kids can make paper ghosts dance with static electricity and blow up a balloon Dracula without touching it.