Homemade Dinosaur Eggs/ Geology eggs

Geology eggs, paleontology eggs, dinosaur eggs, gem eggs, dig your own fossil eggs... You know the type. You get the kits where, with a small tool, you can dig a treasure of some sort out of the plaster mix.

I thought they'd make a terrific party favour for Miss 4's birthday party, however the bought ones cost too much. So here's how we made our own.

Kaleidescope Tutorial

Cheap, easy and quick; making your own kaleidoscope is a great activity to do with the kids. It took us about 20 minutes to gather the materials together and make 2 kaleidoscopes and the kids were very impressed with them.

Tactile Chemistry

We started off with the plan of making fluffy stuff, using cornflour, shaving cream and food colour. We made up a bowl of pink and then made a second bowl of purple fluffy stuff.

Good fun in the making.

NOTE: Put the food dye on the shaving foam, not cornflour, this helps it to spread out rather than making a mixture with lots of little spots.

We moved the activity outside as it was obviously going to get pretty messy pretty quickly (and this helped the smell of the shaving foam dissipate too)

I gave Miss 4 a tray to get playing, and popped inside to get my camera. By the time I came out again, the two colours were mixed into one.

For a while this was great, but after half an hour or so Miss 4 found she couldn't really build the things she wanted to build with it.

Threading and Patterning.

Today we started with a couple of cut out cards Miss 3 brought home from Kindy this week. She wanted to stick them together. I suggested that she punch some holes in the side and turn it into a threading. She suggested threading beads on and started pointing out the patterns she was making so I decided to introduce her to Fibonacci numbers (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,...) and mirror patterning to add to her patterning, she finished it all off with some extra enhancements glued and stuck on top.

The result doesn't look all that impressive, but when you think about all the design decisions, fine motor threading exercises, counting, patterning, sewing lessons and a little bit of semi sidewalk maths thrown in, not to mention it was a very pleasant hour spent in the making, it was actually a super activity.

The Science of Air

I saw this experiment here and it's one of the best science experiments I've done with the kids (and beautifully described too). Mr 5 in particular kept on telling me how cool it was.

The gist of the instructions is to take an old plastic bottle and put a hole in the side, put a straw in the hole pointing upwards and seal the hole with blue-tac. Have a chat with the kids about gas/air and what's inside the bottle. Fill the bottle with water (until it's at risk of coming out the straw). Blow up the balloon and talk about what's inside the balloon, and then put the balloon onto the bottle and watch the water squirt out.

Not only did the kids seem to get the talk about air, they loved everything about the experiment. They filled the bottle up again and again and again. Then Miss 3 asked to put a second straw in, so we did that and talked about water pressure. And of course plenty of flower petals and leaves were added (because they were there, and to see what would happen - which wasn't a great deal).

A perfect bit of summer science.

Home Made Weather Station

This was a super activity to start the school holidays with. Mr 5 is doing lots of weather at school, and loving it, and so they were both very keen to make their own weather station . We got the free printables from Mr Printables, I laminated them (with the thought they'd be up for a while and probably revisited when Miss 3 does weather at school), and then I did most of the cutting out and assemblng while the kids ran around the house imagining all sorts of wild weather.

The chart leaves you with a pile of cards for the "Today is" section. The kids have been keen to learn how to use my sewing machine, so they both sewed super simple bags for the extra cards, and then stapled the bag to the chart.

Salt and Ice Sculptures.

I have been wanting to do the ice and salt experiment for a while now with the kids, I was just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit. It's a perfect activity for a warm spring or summer day. Last week we had a lovely day, and I had remembered to freeze a nice big block of ice.

It was one of the nicest, simplest and most satisfying experiments I've done with the kids. All you need to do is freeze a big block of ice, make a few different colours with food colouring in water, and fill a small container with table salt. Take it all outside on a tray with a couple of spoons and let the kids play.

At first it was interesting watching all the colour mixing. That kept going for a while, watching the colours blend and the ice slowly melt away. By the time the colours had mixed into a dark green colour the tunnels were looking very interesting. We could scoop some of the used water from the tray and pour it back into the ice, until we had a couple of nice tunnels, and the kids finally had had enough.

 

Non-Newtonian Fluids

Cornflour gloop is always a bit of fun. Put some cornstarch in a bowl, add water and colour, get messy. We also played treasure hunt, where I hid some small things in the mix, and the kids had to find them. Then, just for the educational side I talked about how this was an unusual (non-Newtonian) fluid because the faster you move it, the harder it gets.

Growing Salt and Sugar Crystals

Salt Crystals

Sugar Crystals

The other day Mr 5 asked to do one of the experiments in his science book (Awesome Experiments, by Trevor Cook). We didn't follow the instructions exactly, but the general essence was dissolve sugar in hot water and dissolve salt in hot water, put a string in each solution and wait for crystals to form on the string. The book told us we could use hot tap water that hadn't been boiled.

First we set up our cups. I broke a wooden skewer and tied some string around it (this stops it from rolling off the side of the cup), while Mr 5 labelled which cup was which. Then we stirred as much sugar or salt into the liquid as we could (a little at a time until it would no longer dissolve in the water.)

Then we waited and waited and waited. About 2 weeks. Eventually the salt wicked up the string and formed some not very impressive blobby white crystals. The sugar worked better and eventually gave us some pretty sparkly crystals.

Sugar Crystals

I've done the salt before, but always by stirring the salt into a boiling pot of water. The increased temperature allows the water to super-saturate (dissolve more salt than it could have at a lower/room temperature). So I decided to give that a go. This time around I also used cotton thread on the skewers, to minimise wicking. 

Within an hour we had crystals forming, and by the next day it was finished.

Salt Crystals

I had never made the sugar crystals before and was a little disappointed to find they made crystals with a fairly square structure, like the salt. I was hoping they would be a very different shape so that we could talk about molecular structure a bit. But apart from that it was a very satisfying experiment.

Soda and Vinegar Colours

 

Another rainy day to fill with inside play. This time we chose a science experiment I saw on Homemade Serenity. The idea is simple, cover a tray in Bi-carb of Soda, fill some containers with different coloured vinegar and let the kids slowly drop the vinegar on the bi-carb.

They loved it! 

First (because we didn't have any eye-droppers in house) I taught the kids how to lift up liquid using a straw with their finger on the end. That's a nice little experiment in itself. I gave them two cups, one full of water and one empty, and asked them to try and fill the empty cup.

While they were doing that I set up the tray with bi-carb and vinegar. It was definitely something I wanted to supervise for, as there was a tendency to get a bit messy (it could be nice to do on a summer day outside).

Not only did they get to see the bubbling chemical reaction, but they could also experiment with colour mixing.

Kitchen Chemistry

One afternoon Mr 4 asked if we could do a science experiment, something he loves. He wanted to mix milk with water and see what happened. Seeing as I didn't think that would be a particularly long lasting or exciting experiment, I decided to also start another experiment with oil, vinegar, food colour and bi-carb of soda, at the same time.

First I put the oil and vinegar in the container and looked at the layers with the kids. Then I added a few drops of red food colouring, and we admired that for a while.

We shook it and the food colouring went into the vinegar but not the oil. Then we added bi-carb for a bit of fizz.

The kids liked that, but wanted to know what would happen if we added it all to the milk and water experiment. At first we got some interesting pink patterns.

And then we went and hung out the washing and had a play. When we came back, it had turned into this interesting (although somewhat icky) separated mixture. This was then carefully saved for Mr Crafty to see, although I'm not sure he fully appreciated it ;).

Making a Wind Vane

We found this activity in a beautiful book "Feel the Wind" by Arthur Dorros. An excellent book for explaining what wind is to young children. 

We made this first wind vane together, and then the kids made a second one by themselves.

You need a pencil with an eraser, some cardboard, a pin and a straw.

Put them together, making sure you put the pin through the balance point of the arrow.

Take it outside and put it in the ground.

Using a compass, put rocks around to mark north, south, east and west.

Make Your Own Magnifying Glass

This is not one of my projects, but I love the simplicity so much I just had to share. Science Sparks have instructions on how to make a magnifying glass out of a soft drink bottle and a bit of water. 

I tried it with my kids and it was fast, simple and very effective. They loved it.

Playing with Ice

This is a great activity for a warm sunny day. First we filled a couple of muffin trays with water. We put food colouring in the water, mixing up a slightly different colour for each hole (although the colours were difficult to see against the dark muffin tray, it did make them prettier in the water). We then collected a variety of small things from flowers and leaves to plastic toys, old shells and coins, and dropped one in each hole.

And then for the most difficult part of this activity: waiting for it all to freeze.

Once the ice was frozen, we filled a tub with water, put the ice cubes in and watched them melt. It was interesting for the kids to see what would float and what would sink, and they though it was very exciting to watch the ice melt and see what melted first and see the treasures re-appear. But above all, they just enjoyed getting their hands wet and cold.

They enjoyed this activity so much we immediately made a few more batches, and we even made a couple of bowls of ice to take to kindy for their water play table.