Category: Science Units

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).

We’re ready for our month of science experiments!I gathered lots of ideas, printed them out and putthem together into a little booklet. We watch a friend during the school holidays and lastJanuary we did a lot of science experiments together.The experiments were such a bit hit with all the kidslast year that we decided to spend a full month doingexperiments again this year. My goal is for the experiments to...

Experiment 1: What do ants eat? There are about 1300 different species of ants herein Australia. We’ve heard that there are more ants(by weight) in Australia than people in the world. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can tell you thatwe see streams of ants an inch thick heading upand down the side- walks in the parks andeverywhere. As an aside, DD was bit by a 1 inch...

In Australia we have 5, 10, 20, 50 cent coins and twogold coins $1 and $2. For this experiment we neededUS pennies. 1) We prepared 4 bowls with vinegar, water, salt and vinegar,salt and water. 2) The kids (each did their own experiment) added a pennyto each bowl. 3) We observed after 5, 10 and 15 minutes to discover whyscientists combine certain chemicals. Experiment from: Mudpies to Magnets

LD found that the vinegar/salt combination was theshiniest. Interestingly, DD’s vinegar/salt soaked penny was NOTthe shiniest in her group (I think the water/saltcombination was). Because of this we talked about theneed for scientists to perform experiments over and over.

What you need: 1) Take a stalk of celery, cut the stem and slice the celeryup the center. 2) Stand the celery up in two pots. Fill the cups withwater and add 2 drops of dye to each cup. (I let the kidschoose their own colors, but you get the best results withred and blue). 3) Observe every 15 minutes. 4) Since ED also participated we did a stalk from...