Paint Powder and a Squirty Bottle

Ever since seeing something like this on Playschool, I've really wanted to try it. Such a simple and fun activity. Get some powdered paint (we had tempura paint) sprinkle it on the paper and squirt with water. Hang it up to dry. Fun!

Note: This is messy, so a great one for outside.

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.

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.

 

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.

Dora Castle Cake

I love birthdays and I love dreaming up birthday cakes. I was very pleased with how this one turned out. The base is made with 2 square chocolate cakes. I trimmed the side of the cake where the two cakes join to make them sit more neatly together, and then put one of the trimmed pieces as the bottom of the moat.

The castle is made with 1 rectangular cake cake cut into two matching squares. The squares went on top of each other. The trimmed off pieces were used to add to each side of the castle, so I ended up with a cube shape with missing corners where the towers needed to fit. 

The towers were made of small sponge rolls, and the two towers on the top were made from one sponge roll cut into two different length pieces. I dipped small ice cream cones in white chocolate and dusted them with sprinkles for the spires. (I used chocolate to stop the the cones from getting soggy, however they weren't very tasty so runny icing would have also done the trick). The flags were made by gluing some rectangles of pink wrapping paper to cooking skewers. The skewers were then pushed right through the cones and sponge rolls and cake to keep everything in place.

The left over white chocolate was spread on baking paper and I swirled a bit of pink food colouring through to get a marbled effect. I cut out a door shape from the chocolate when it set. The bridge was made from pink wafer biscuits. The whole cake was iced in a thin layer of butter icing, and decorated with tiny marshmallows, sugar flowers and M&Ms. The grass was sprinkled with coconut that had green food colouring rubbed through.

The birthday girl loved it (and so did Mr 4)!

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.