When you’re a child, science is just a fancy word for magic, which is why these six fun experiments should wow the kids.
Water Walking
You’ll need seven glasses of water for this one: three empty, one with red food colouring, one with blue colouring, and one with yellow coolouring, or any colours that you happen to have in your baking cupboard.
Arrange them in a line, alternating coloured and empty glasses. Fold six squares of paper towel in half and then half again and make bridges between the containers with the folded paper towels.
Your kids can watch as the coloured water walks over the bridges and into the empty containers, mixing colours, filling up the empty glasses with coloured water and giving them a first-hand look at the magic of capillarity.
Magic Milk
Put a few drops of food colouring in a shallow bowl of milk and watch as they form little self-contained blobs. They will stay like that until you get your mini scientist to add a little dishwashing liquid to a toothpick and touch the food colouring that will make the colours swirl around on their own like magic. It all has to do with surface tension. At first, the food colouring stays on the surface, but the soapy dishwashing liquid causes a chemical reaction that breaks the surface tension.
Mold Science
Mold experiments are always fascinating when you’re a child. Kids can see how different additives (salt, vinegar, dirty hands, rubbing the bread on an ipad etc) affect the growing of mold on a slice of bread.
For a twist on this experiment that might lead to more hygienic habits, you can also see how mold grows on bread that’s been touched by hands that have been washed with soap and water, cleansed with hand sanitiser, or not washed at all. A great idea to encourage them to make sure they sing Happy Birthday twice while they are washing their hands.
Instant Ice
Frozen fans can become Elsa… almost. All they have to do is chill water in the freezer until it’s almost frozen, then pour it over ice placed on an overturned ceramic bowl. Kids can see the transformation between the states of matter, and also discover how ice crystals are formed.
Tea Bag Rocket
Want a memorable way to teach kids that hot air rises? Take the tea out of a tea bag, hollow it out and stand it up, and then set if on fire with a match (mums and dads, help is definitely required here). The hollowed-out bag is so light, it rises along with the hot air, and becomes a flying tea bag.
Skittles Patterns
Place a handful of Skittles into a shallow bowl of water, and watch how the colours swirl. Skittles are basically pure sugar and dissolve in water, so you can use this as in intro to solvents, solutes, and solutions. We wouldn’t advise eating them afterwards though!
Click here for loads of other fun ways to keep the kids entertained.
