Making medicine adult led activity

More pharmacist activities

What you will need

Water tray or table with trays for pouring
Jugs
Measuring containers (beakers, spoons, measuring cylinders, cups etc.)
Funnel
Bottles with lids
Food colouring
Medicine recipe cards – we have editable 5 and 10 frames here
We have recipe cards using 5 frames here
We have recipe cards using 10 frames here
Pharmacist poster

Duration

10 – 15 minutes

The pharmicist poster

Measure different amounts and colours of water to create medicine mixtures.

Important safety notes:

Before starting this activity, please make sure that the children in your setting understand:

If they find medicines in the form of liquids, tablets, inhalers, creams, drops, patches or syringes, they should not touch or taste them. They should immediately tell or show an adult.
They should only take medicines that are given to them by their parent, carer or the practitioner at their EYFS setting.
They should never take medicines that a doctor has prescribed for somebody else.

Early Learning Goal links

Mathematics: Number ELG
Mathematics: Numerical Patterns ELG
Understanding the World ELG: Past and Present
Understanding the World ELG: People, Culture and Communities
Understanding the World ELG: The Natural World
Expressive Arts and Design ELG: Creating with Materials

Download the progression document which includes statements from Development Matters (birth to age five) and the relevant ELGs in full for the making medicine adult led activity here.

Characteristics of effective learning

Our EYFS units provide enabling environments with teaching and support from adults. Reflecting on the characteristics of effective teaching and learning, children will have opportunity to learn and develop by:
• playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
• active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
• creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things

Taken from Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage.

STEM vocabulary to introduce

Mixture, medicine, mixing, liquid, container, funnel, fill, pour, estimate, nearly, close to, about the same as, just over, just under, too much, too little, enough, not enough, full, empty, half, full, holds, more than, less than, the same as, equals, lighter, darker, colours, predict.

Note about language.

We recommend that you DO NOT refer to this activity as ‘making potions’. Children often link that to magic, and hence you might introduce or reinforce a misconception about how science works.

Before you start

Show the children the pharmacist poster and tell the children that they are going to be pharmacists for this activity.

Ask the children if they know what a pharmacist does.

Pharmacists dispense medicines. This means they prepare and give medicines to people who have a prescription (or their adult if they are a child). Pharmacists can work in a pharmacy, hospital or GP practice. They can also give advice about prescriptions, how to use and store medicines, and the dangers of medicines. Some pharmacists also make and test new medicines.

Pharmacists are:

Creative when they make new medicines and when they prepare and make special medicines for patients.

Curious about what is wrong with their patients when they are unwell and about which medicines will be best to make them better.

Observant they need to read prescriptions carefully and make sure they give the correct amount of each medicine to their patients.

Tell the children that they are going to need to be creative to make the medicine and observant to follow the instructions.

You can make your medicine using any equipment you have available in your setting. You may want to use measuring spoons, beakers, measuring cylinders, jugs or a combination of all of these things. You will need to choose, or ask the children to decide, which illness to make the medicine for.

We have examples using different combinations of beakers of coloured water on 5 frames here and 10 frames here. We also have editable 5 and 10 frame templates with different coloured water here. We used 100ml beakers to make 500ml of medicine using the 5 frame recipes and 50ml beakers to make 500ml of medicine using the 10 frame recipes. Make sure the mixture you are using will fit into your medicine bottle before you start.

You will need to prepare the jugs of coloured water by putting a few drops of food colouring in each jug.

What to do – step 1

Ask the children to follow the instructions to make the medicine. Depending on the children you are working with, you may want to ask each child to create their own medicine or ask each child to take a turn to make a bottle of medicine as a group. If you are using a funnel to pour the mixture into the bottle, you or another child will need to hold the equipment steady while the first pharmacist uses the funnel. You could ask:

What is this medicine for?
Have you ever suffered from this?
Did you have to take medicine?
What are the instructions telling you to do?
Where do you need to fill your beaker up to?
Where do you pour from when you use a jug?
Can you use the spout to pour?
Do you have enough/too much in there?
Can you use the funnel to pour it into the bottle?

Step 2

You could concentrate on the different ways the recipes explore the composition of 5 and 10. You could ask:

How many containers of green liquid do you need to make your medicine?
How many have you poured already?
How many more do you need?
If you have poured 3 containers of green water into the mixture, how many more do you need to make 5?
How many containers of blue liquid do you need?
How many containers of clear liquid do you need?
How many containers of liquid do you need altogether?
What is the total of 5 green, 2 blue and 3 clear containers?
What is 5 add 2 add 3?
If you have already added 5 green and 2 blue, how many containers have you added to your mixture?
How many more do you need to make 10?

Step 3

You might want to focus on looking at the changes in colour that occur while making the medicine. You could ask:

What colour do you think your medicine mixture will be?
What colour liquid are you pouring into the medicine mixture?
What colour is the medicine now?
Which colours have you mixed together?
What colour does blue and green make when it is mixed together?

When you medicine is almost complete, you could ask the children to predict or guess whether all of the mixture is going to fit into the medicine bottle. If they have measured accurately, it should do. You could ask:

Why do you think the mixture fitted into the bottle?
Why do you think there was too much mixture for the bottle?
What could you do differently next time?

You could put the lids on your bottles and keep the mixtures to compare with each other and to use in a pharmacist role play.

Other things to try- lighter and darker mixtures

You might want to use a one colour and water in your medicine to explore how you can make the colour lighter and darker. This can also be used if you want to concentrate on number bonds to 5 or 10. You can use our editable medicine templates to make these recipes. While making these mixtures, you could ask:

How many containers of red do you need to put in? How many of clear water? How many does that make altogether?
If you have put in 3 containers of red, how many more do you need to make 5 or 10?
How do you think you would make your medicine a darker colour? How could you make it a lighter colour?
Which medicine is darker: The one with one container of red liquid or the one with 5 containers of red liquid?

Remember to refer to the children as pharmacists and praise them for using the attributes. You could say things like:

“You have been creative like an pharmacist because you created the medicines for your patients.”

“You have been observant like a pharmacist and followed the medicine mixture recipe very carefully.”

The science of pills

We have put together some useful information about the science of medicine making to accompany this activity. Don’t worry, this is for your information only and to help you answer any questions children may have. We don’t expect you to explain this to the children in your setting!

Why did our medicine change colour?

Liquid food colourings are usually made from water and a coloured dye or pigment. The dye is dissolved in the water to make a solution. This is a physical change and not a chemical one.

When we add the liquid food colouring to the water, the food colouring spreads out throughout the mixture. Once the water and colouring are mixed together, the final liquid looks the same throughout. This is called a homogeneous solution.

We made different strength solutions by adding food colouring to different amounts of water with different. When we add more food colouring to the water, the colour becomes darker because there is more dye or pigment in the solution . When we add more water to the solution, it becomes more diluted and looks lighter.

The light we see is made up of the different colours of the spectrum, these are the colours of the rainbow. When light passes through the coloured water some of the colours of the spectrum are absorbed. Other colours will pass through or be reflected. The colour we see is a result of which ones are not absorbed. That means a red liquid has absorbed all of the other colours apart from red. This light reaches our eyes and we perceive the object as being red.

What is a medicine?

Medicines are products that contain active ingredients. An active ingredient is a chemical compound that can be used to cure, halt or prevent disease; ease symptoms; or help in the diagnosis of illness. Active ingredients may be based on molecules extracted from plants, made by a chemical reaction in a laboratory, or be the byproduct of organisms such as fungi.

Medicines may be in the form of liquids, tablets, capsules, inhalers, creams, drops and patches.

Medicines act in a variety of ways.

Antibiotics can cure an illness by killing or halting the spread of invading bacteria.

Some medicines can control problems such as high blood pressure.

Medicines like insulin can replace missing substances or corrects low levels of natural body chemicals.

Analgesics are medicines which block the pathways that transmit pain signals from the injured or irritated body part to the brain, relieving pain.

Vaccines can protect the body against some infectious diseases. They teach your body to make the correct antibodies to fight against the disease if you catch it.

What are the different types of liquid medication?

Liquid medications are mostly used for children, but may also be taken by adults who have difficulty swallowing tablets or capsules. There are four types of liquid medicines.

An Elixir is a sweet alcohol-based solutions in which active ingredients are dissolved.

A solution is a liquid containing dissolved active ingredients.

A suspension is a liquid holding undissolved particles of the active ingredient that must be shaken before taking.

A syrup has liquid active ingredients dissolved in sugar water to disguise the taste.

Why are most medicines in tablet form?

Tablets are the most common form of medication as they are small, convenient, easy to take yourself and simple to manufacture. They have low production costs and are easily transported and stored. Tablets have greater flexibly in design so can include different dosage release patterns. They can contain multiple drugs or different doses of the same drug in layered tablets, which reduces the number of tablets that need to be taken.