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By Kim Vij

How to Dye Rainbow Sea Shells

How to Dye seashells with kids. A science lesson with vinegar and egg dye or food coloring that creates rainbow seashells.

Learn how to dye seashells with your kids. Did you know you can make your own rainbow seashells? With just a few materials you’d be surprised how easy you can dye these colorful shells with your child.

Have you ever thought about what to do with the leftover Easter egg dye that you use for eggs every year?

Rainbow Sea Shells Science Experiment

I’m going to be honest I never have until this Easter, I guess just because we’re always busy doing other things on Easter with our extended family. This year after we finished my 6 year old daughter asked me what else she could use the Egg Dye for?

I turned to the interest and found that you can color coffee filters, clothespins, yarn, and even Tie Die and paint with your leftover vinegar based egg dye.

However, we wanted something similar to eggs…

We both thought about it and this is what we came up with…Seashells

Now I’ll admit we have quite a few seashells in our sandbox from our many trips to the beach, we’re very lucky to live a few hours from the beach since all of my kids were born. So in 20 years we’re gathered quite a few and use them for playtime.

You’d be amazed at how many ways you can use seashells for imaginary play.

We’ve painted them like these Storytelling Shells but I never thought about dying them.

We brought our containers outside and gathered up our seashells. We washed them off first and let them dry out so they could absorb as much of the vinegar based dye as they could.

That’s ok we have fun playing outdoors in our gorgeous spring weather in the south this weekend.

Coloring the seashells worked out to be a great sibling activity too!

How to Dye Seashells with Kids

Once our seashells were dry we set them inside of the various colors of Egg Dye and watched to see what happened. I wasn’t sure if they would change due to their surface, so it was so much fun to observe and watch as they change. A little science and discovery at home is always a good thing!

We left them in the colored water for around 30 minutes, but honestly experiment to see the variety of results you get… it’s a science experiment with your kids so enjoy!

Here’s how our Dyed Seashells turned out, a rainbow of fun!

Did you throw your dye away already, no worries you could think about grabbing a few egg dye kits on clearance this week and making your own Rainbow Shells this spring!

I think we must just try rocks next!

What would you color next with leftover egg dye?

Sight Word Sea Shells

Alphabet Fun with Shells

Storytelling Shells

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How to Dye seashells with kids. A science lesson with vinegar and egg dye or food coloring that creates rainbow seashells.

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Filed Under: Arts, Science Tagged With: #afterschool, Afterschool Express, Easter, grade school, Kim, Ocean, Preschool, Science Fun, Seashells, STEAM

About Kim Vij

Early childhood teacher, author, speaker and mom of 3. Kim shares ways to make learning fun and parenting an adventure by sharing developmentally appropriate activities.

« Let’s Make Rain: A Pre-writing Activity for Preschool
10 Ways to Tempt Your Kids to Go Outside and Play this Spring »

Comments

  1. Ticia says

    April 1, 2013 at 8:56 am

    I dyed some fabric with my leftover Easter eggs.

  2. Kelly at Little Wonders' Days says

    April 1, 2013 at 9:27 am

    Hi Kim,

    We've painted shells before, but not like this! How pretty, love them.

    Kelly

  3. Jessica Dorrington says

    April 7, 2013 at 10:08 pm

    I love this!

  4. Stephanie says

    April 23, 2013 at 10:13 pm

    This is such a fantastic idea. I've been excited to try it ever since you first posted it, and I included it in our natural art roundup today! http://www.two-daloo.com/2013/04/23/toddler-art-tuesdays-painted-nature-collage-and-nature-art-roundup/ Thanks for sharing!

  5. Jo Todd says

    February 19, 2014 at 11:49 am

    I'd never thought of using the left over die for anything else. With Easter coming up and a box of shells in the basement we will definitely be trying this. Will be interesting to see what else we end up dying .

  6. Megan Sheakoski says

    April 13, 2014 at 12:56 pm

    These are gorgeous!

  7. Anonymous says

    June 26, 2014 at 10:26 am

    How long did you leave them in the dye?

    • Kim Vij says

      March 7, 2019 at 7:37 am

      We left them in for about an hour to dye.

  8. Robyn Francis says

    April 19, 2015 at 8:06 pm

    How long did you leave them in the dye and did the color dye last? I wondered if it would rub off on hands or other surfaces over time. Very cute project!!!

    • Kim Vij says

      March 7, 2019 at 7:38 am

      Thanks, we had fun with these in our backyard play for quite some time. We left them in for about an hour to dye the color, I imagine you could leave them longer for stronger colors. We did not have any problem with the color rubbing off afterwards.

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Kim Vij

Early childhood teacher, author, speaker and mom of 3. Kim Vij shares ways to make learning fun and parenting an adventure by sharing all kinds of easy kid crafts, activities and even recipes for kids!
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