Sunday Science – Little Kid Experiments

We went to a great drop-in science class this past week. I posted this picture earlier of Tornado Boy holding a balloon with a wooden dowel passed through it. Here’s what you need to pull that off:

• A small balloon – one with some ‘give’ to it. Don’t blow it all the way up.
• A wooden dowel stick with a pointed end.
• A jar of vaseline.

First you blow up the balloon and tie it off. Make sure that it is not full stretched, it will need some slack. Dip your finger in the vaseline and carefully coat the dowel stick all over with it. Pass the stick from the middle of the top side of the balloon (the dark spot where the rubber is thickest) to the other end of the balloon right next to where it is tied off. It helps to work with your child to slowly twist the stick in order for it to get through the balloon. It’s like magic! The balloon will slowly deflate once the stick is through, so take your pictures right away!

Station 2 had earthworms to observe. The instructor had schematic drawings of earthworms to help the kids identify their different segments. She also had some photographs of an earthworm dissection that she had done with an older class of students so that the kids could see what the different organs were inside of an earthworm, and to compare them to their own bodies. The kids could scoop the earthworms out of their dirt container and observe how they moved on a plate.

The third station that we visited had a microscope and lots of different things to look at. I wish that we had a microscope at home, but I really don’t want to make the investment yet. Tornado Boy can be pretty rough on things still. He did have a great time looking at different things under it, though. They had salt crystals, crayons, pencils, playing cards, rocks, Lego blocks, feathers and other objects to look at. Tornado Boy enjoyed this a lot. Since I don’t plan on buying a microscope any time soon, I looked up virtual microscopes and I found a couple of possibilities: Kbears Interactive Microscope and for older kids, Discovery Education has a Virtual Electron Microscope.

Station four was a sense of smell experiment. There were six small film containers (remember those?). Each was capped and contained something for the kids to sniff. There were blindfolds to use if the kids would let you (no way!) so that they couldn’t peek and were truly only using their sense of smell. Tornado Boy had a really hard time with this one. The items that I can remember were coffee, bread, and laundry detergent. Each container sat on a piece of paper that had the answer for the item written on the back of it. For non-readers, you could put a picture of the item on the card.

The final station that we visited went way over Tornado Boy’s head, but he enjoyed watching the reactions. The experiment started with three containers of purple cabbage juice. To each container, the student could mix in a different item and watch the juice change color. They had lemon juice, dish liquid, sugar, Dr. Pepper and vinegar. The juice reacts and changes color depending on if what is added to it is an acid or a base. There are more instructions if you want to perform this experiment here.

This class was really fun and had a great mix of experiments that can be done with children of various ages. We were really glad that we went!

For more fun science lessons and activities, check out Ticia’s Science Sunday post at Adventures in Mommydom!