Preschool at Home: Science for 2-5 Year Olds (and Up!)

Amazing, Fun Science To Wow the Little Ones!

One of the wonderful things I love about homeschooling is all the hands-on activities you can do with kids.  In the preschool years, I scoured the Internet and various science experiment books to find things that would intrigue and excite the kids… and that they could have a hand in doing.  Most of the things we did were done using household ingredients.

As you can see from the previous posts in this series, we did do some more traditional preschool activities like learning letter sounds and learning about numbers, but my main goal in the 2-4 year old age range was to keep the kids intrigued and engaged.

So how did I fit science in when I had a newborn, 2 and 4 year old?  Well, I generally planned things out on a Sunday night. Mondays were usually our science experiment days. I usually covered over the tray so the kids couldn’t see what we’d be doing to add spice and excitement to the activity!  These activities really only lasted 10-20 minutes (plus clean up), but seeing the kids so engaged made that extra effort worth it.

Here are a few examples some things we did when my kids were 2 and 4 years old…

One day  we talked about liquids. We learned that some liquids are more dense (heavy) than others. We put oil and colored water into a bottle. Then we added honey and watched what happened.

IMG_4697Density

 

If you’ve glanced through various Montessori blogs, you’ll see that pouring is wonderful skill to build dexterity, hand strength, fine motor skills… what better practice than to enjoy some science along with it!

IMG_8865-730953

Then we wanted to see what would happen when you add milk to oil and water. If you pour slowly and carefully, the milk will form droplets within the oil. You might pour the milk onto a spoon and gently let one drop go at a time or use an eyedropper to squeeze out a drop at a time.  The kids loved the way that looked!

Milk-in-oil-and-water

 

Exploding Volcano: Another very fun activity to do with kids is to make a volcano.

We made a paper mache volcano with a plastic soda bottle as the base.

Paper mache:

  • 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup water.
  • Stir in 2 cups boiling water.
  • Mix.
  • Put newspaper strips in the mixture and glop it onto the plastic bottle.  I think their projects were more charming being slopped on haphazardly!  Once they were dry (it took several days in dry conditions), we painted ours brown.

Then comes the fun part!!  Get your lava ready!

Lava:

  • 1/2 cup baking soda into the volcano.
  • In a pitcher mix 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup vinegar, 1/4 cup dish washing liquid, red food coloring.
  • Pour the vinegar mixture into the can and watch the lava flow!

 TaDa!

IMG_8838-789515

 

Make Your Own Fossils — The kids made their own fossils several times over the years. The picture below includes some are impressions from LD’s Thunderbird rockets which he was really into at the time (age 4 or so). DD made dinosaur tracks and impressions of a beetle, dragonfly and fly.

CIMG9754-736770

The recipe for making fossils is pretty easy:

  • 2-3 Tablespoons used coffee grounds
  • 2/3 cup salt (a little less)
  • 2/3 cup flour
  • enough cold coffee to make the mixture dough-like
  • Make your impressions and then bake in a low heated oven for a while (an hour on one side, an hour on the other).
You can print out a copy of these recipes and descriptions by clicking on the link below:
3FunScienceExperiments
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Related Post: You might also be interested in a the 9-page science experiment pack I put together a year or so ago. This includes egg-related experiments, our “fireworks in milk” science activity, yeast blowing up a balloon and others.   This link takes you to that post:

P1230991-milk-fireworks
ScienceExperimentPacket

Here’s another activity we did when the kids were little: Working with Mealworms There’s a free worksheet with science activities.

Mealworm-Activity-FoodPreference

If your kids are a little older, they might enjoy these chemistry experiments that my 7 year old did. You’ll find a free printable of those chemistry experiments at either of the posts below:
Have fun with your budding scientist!
 Dinosaur Packet for Ages 3-7

Dinosaur Packet:  We are SO excited, our 60+ Page Dinosaur Packet is finally ready!! It includes 

  • Montessori 3-Part Dinosaur Cards
  • Dinosaur Lapbook
  • Letter Recognition Activities
  • Number Activities and Games
  • Dinosaur Game Board
  • Coloring Pages
  • Herbivores vs. Carnivore Sorting Activity
  • Fast Fact Information Cards
  • Dinosaur Writing Cards
  • Bingo Cards and more!

DinosaurPacket-Lapbook-MontessoriCards-More

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Other related posts you might be interested in:

StPatricksDayWordsTeaching Kids to Read: Books and Resources We Used:

TeachingKidsToRead

 

See you again soon here or Homeschool Den Facebook page. Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter! ~Liesl

 

32 Responses

  1. viv says:

    Liesl no link for the science experiments xxx
    viv

    • Liesl Den says:

      Ooops… finished the post too late last night and didn’t put the link in! Thanks for the heads-up! It should work now! 🙂

  2. viv says:

    Liesl no link for the science experiments xxx
    viv

    • Liesl Den says:

      Ooops… finished the post too late last night and didn’t put the link in! Thanks for the heads-up! It should work now! 🙂

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