Category: Science Units

By the way, I read that you can freeze the red cabbage juice and then thaw it to use later.

This simple experiment is courtesy of a goodfriend of ours (thanks Mr. M!). All you needis a very strong (earth) magnet, a copper wireand a battery. The wire doesn’t need to touchthe magnet at the bottom, it just needs to beclose. The wire will spin very quickly aroundthe battery (and will get quite warm to thetouch, which also fascinated the kids). The kids thought it was interesting that ifthey flipped...

We actually do this experiment fairly frequently. Wefirst did this last January. Then we made volcanoes againfor our Natural Disasters unit (when we studied hurricanes,volcanoes, tornadoes, tsunamis and things like that). Wehad the perfect opportunity to do this experiment againalong with the Bubble Bombs when a friend was over fora play this afternoon. I’m sure you know how, but if not: A few days ago, we made the volcano from...

The kids had a lot of fun with this experimentas well. 1) Add vinegar to the bottom of a ziploc bag.Ours happened to be red because of the volcanobut plain vinegar is fine.2) Place baking soda into a tissue, wrap it upand hold it near the top while sealing the bag.3) Mix the baking soda and vinegar, drop andrun.4) The bag will POP much to the delight ofthe kids!

Today’s experiments (8 & 9) both investigated surfacetension. In this milk experiment, we watched as dish washingsoap broke the surface tension of the milk and sent dyeracing away. So, here’s what we did:1) Pour a small pitcher of milk onto a plate2) Place 1 drop of each color — red, yellow, blue and green3) Dip a Q-tip into dish washing soap 4) Place the Q-tip gently in the center of...

Now you can continue altering the surface tension, dippingthe dish-soap covered Q-tip in various spots in the milk.

We had some really interesting movement when weadded a drop of blue and red food coloring and then leta couple drops of soap drip into the milk. The kids really, really enjoyed this experiment! I highlyrecommend this one. I’ve seen this experiment in a number of places, but there’sa good explanation of the science behind it all at:http://www.abc.net.au/science/surfingscientist/pdf/lesson_1_amazing_science.pdfon pages 6-7.

Grandpa sent us a wonderful science video clipabout water drops. So, I set up this experiment togo along with the two minute video (which wewatched afterward). The experiment wasquite simple, but the kids were at it for at leasttwenty minutes! 1) Pour a pitcher of water into a dish2) Place some colored water into a small dish3) Using an eye dropper, pick up some coloredwater.4) Drop ONE drop into the...

Here’s our craft table all set up with a science station. Theseexperiments have to do mostly with magnetic attraction,although we have one on particle attraction as well. I also have the magnetic maze (a gift from a formerkindergarten teacher/friend) and a craft on the milky waygalaxy.

This is a simple lesson that shows how particles areattracted to each other. Just have them drop paper intostill water (don’t blow or move the water around) andwatch the bits of paper move toward one another. We used bits of paper from my comb binder, but anysmall pieces should work. I’ve heard that you could alsosubstitute talcum powder or baby powder, but we did nottry this.

LD and DD just played around with a magnetic set we’vehad for years. They also tried an experiment to see if heat or cold affectedthe magnet’s force. (education.com)

LD had more fun with this when I told him I was timing him. Thesecond time round he had to see if he’d beat his previous time(and he did 1min40 down to 57seconds).