Kids are born scientists. On rainy days, keep those curious minds busy with some at-home, everyday science fun.
1. Grow a bean in a clear bag to watch the roots grow down and the stem grow up. Plant more than one type of bean or seed to compare how quickly they grow. Keep a record by drawing and measuring your plants each day. What happens if you grow one plant in a window and one in a dark closet?
2. Use lemon juice to make invisible ink that can only be seen when held up to a heat source. Write a “secret” message and have an adult help you reveal the message.
3. Learn about the crystallization process by growing rock candy in a glass. That’s a tasty way to discover and use principles like solutes, solvents, viscosity, sedimentation, solutions, and supersaturated solutions.
4. Force an egg to fit into a bottle by creating suction using heat. It really works!
5. Design a sundial by placing a stick in a vertical position and markers around it marking each hour.
6. Make “elephant toothpaste” out of soap, yeast, and hydrogen peroxide. With a little “kitchen chemistry,” you can make “toothpaste” almost big enough for an elephant-sized toothbrush!
7. After eating fruit, collect the seeds. Test which variables (soil, amount of water, temperature) help the seeds germinate best. Keep a record of your findings.
8. With parent supervision, make cabbage juice pH indicator by carefully boiling red cabbage in water. The remaining pink liquid can be used to identify acids and bases in the kitchen. Acidic substances turn the cabbage juice a yellow/green color. Basic substances turn the cabbage a purple color. Start a list of which kitchen staples are acids and which are bases. Can you guess which things will test as an acid? As a base? Do substances in each category have common characteristics?
9. Use household materials to investigate the density of different objects and liquids. Check out this multi-layered experiment.
10. Explore chemistry by making a milk rainbow using dish soap, food coloring and milk. Key concepts for this easy, at-home experiment are physics, chemistry, liquids, molecules, and surface tension. (Plus, it’s pretty.)
11. Learn more about the properties of liquids by doing the penny drop challenge.
12. Challenge family members to use household materials to make a parachute that helps an object fall with the slowest speed. Use mathematics and measurement to determine who wins!
We’ll be sharing more tips so watch for the next installment of DLD Daily Dozen!