Fun science/nature experiments to do with kids

[BashDash]

Hi,
My young kids (8,6) love doing science experiments with me. We have gotten some kits as presents and also done some various experiments I've found on the internet. My favorites are simple using materials we most likely have around the house. The kids enjoy multi day experiments as well. I can't remember exactly but one experiment we used three seperate plastic cups and they represented an exercising muscle, the liver , and a recovered muscle.

Do bogleheads have any favorite experiments around the house or out in nature?

Thanks!

[sport]

If you have a piece of flexible tubing, you can make a syphon. You can show the kids how to make water run uphill.

[treesinthewind]

This book was a big hit, good variety of experiments that were actually successful with reasonably available materials and provides accurate explanations of why it worked. Should be readily available used or from the library:
https://www.amazon.com/Science-Rocks-Un ... 0756671981

Other thoughts:
Kits are usually one and done, but Snap Circuits kits are great for electricity experiments, just keep an eye on the short circuiting experiment that everyone tries at least once
A soda shoot with diet soda and Mentos is pretty great if they've never done it (on YouTube).
Teaching them to take time lapse photography or slo mo videos on a smartphone doubles the fun of a lot of experiments

[leeks]

There is a great book I recommend to guide in-home science instruction, "Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding" known as BFSU. It is written for the parent to read about each topic and then lead a discussion and demonstrations/experiments with the kids. The parents don't need special expertise to use it and the can learn alongside the kids if needed. It is very well done and carefully thought out. You can use it with kids of varying ages, 6 and 8 seems like a perfect time to start with it. Unfortunately, elementary schools don't seem to have much of this in their curriculum so it makes sense to provide a proper science foundation at home.

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Foundat ... 1478738693

There is an online community that shares resources and ideas about implementation, including lists of supplemental books for the kids to read and materials for experiments.

https://www.bfsucommunity.com/

[Swee'pea]

Please consider fun, simple, real-world math puzzles. Too many young children are turned off by math before getting a good start and math is critical to scientific understanding.

Your children might be the right ages to enjoy The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

[pizzy]

Your children might be the right ages to enjoy The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

This book was a big hit, good variety of experiments that were actually successful with reasonably available materials and provides accurate explanations of why it worked. Should be readily available used or from the library:
https://www.amazon.com/Science-Rocks-Un ... 0756671981

Ordered and ordered. <$10 total.

[Teague]

Let's see... Way back in the day we used to make our own gunpowder out of potassium nitrate, sulfur, and ground up charcoal briquettes. When combined with constructing an electrical switch box and a lantern battery to detonate the charges, that pretty well covered chemistry including stoichiometry, the various gas laws, adiabatic and isothermal processes, energy conversion, limiting reagent reactions, enthalpy, basic circuit construction, and an introduction to Ohm's law. Not sure if I was eight, might have been 10 years old when I did that sort of stuff. Adult supervision recommended, at least the first time or two.

When they're a couple of years older you might consider fermentation and distillation for an introduction to the life sciences.

[livesoft]

Model rocketry is still a thing.

Identifying various mushrooms is still a thing.

Aquariums of either all plants or all fish or both require some knowledge of science, nitrogen cycle, bacteria, photosynthesis, carbon dioxide, ..... And with some effort one can breed either or both live bearers and egg layers.

Hydroponics.

A sport watch to measure heart rate continuously during the day, while exercising, resting, sleeping, ....

Anything weather related.

[psteinx]

A simple trebuchet is interesting to build (though hard to do successfully).

Or you can have the kids work on egg drops - i.e. construct some parachute/cushion type device to hold an egg such that it can drop from progressively higher heights without breaking.

Diet Coke and Mentos...

We bought various commercial science-type kits when our kids were young. Most were under-used. I think the electronics one (various simple electrical/electronic parts that you could connect with a sort of bread-board) was well liked, though.

Legos may not be science, per-se, but are probably good for a young mind to explore the physical world, spatial relationships, etc.

[BashDash]

Thanks for all the wonderful suggestions and book tips! Keep them coming! Appreciate it. Will follow up.

[backpacker61]

Make sourdough starter (and then sourdough bread!).

[nisiprius]

I learned this one from, of all places, Anthony Doerr's novel, All the Light We Cannot See. What makes it possible is the availability of very strong rare earth magnets, which are possibly not totally safe for 6 and 8-year olds--terrible danger if you swallow more than one of them.

It is an electric motor a gazillion times simpler than the traditional one where you wrap a nail with bell wire, and... never mind. It just takes a battery, a screw, a strong button-shaped shiny plated rare-earth magnetic, and a piece of wire.

Rather than describe it, I'll point you to a YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py-0dVJ4K_s

Not exactly experiments but you have GOT to show them some of Vi Hart's "Doodling in Math Class" YouTube videos. How to make mathed potatoes, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5RyVWI4Onk

[nisiprius]

...I think the electronics one (various simple electrical/electronic parts that you could connect with a sort of bread-board) was well liked, though...

If that was one of the Elenco "Snap Circuits" line, my grandchildren liked them and did use them. The fatal flaw of course is that parts get lost, and once you lose even one part you can't build half of the projects in the book.

[nisiprius]

Look around the house, hard, to find a way for the kids to stand in between two almost-parallel mirrors and see the infinite tunnel of reflections (getting progressively dimmer, greener, and more distorted).

May they aren't quite old enough but a concave magnifying shaving mirror or makeup mirror is terrifyingly effective as a burning glasses, much better than any glass magnifying glass you are likely to find. An 8" shaving mirror can make a solid wood pencil burst into flame.

Fortunately, this is NOT true of the slightly-focussed images of the sun that can be cast by modern slightly-concave thermopane windows. The typical presentation is that the sun shines on the window of house X and projects a blurry blob of pretty bright light in the center of a dim "X" of light. I have, first cautiously and then boldly, put my hand into that blob of light and it is definitely warm but not painfully hot.

Look for pinhole images of the sun as it shines through trees. Depending on the density of the leaves, it will sometimes product dozens of round pinhole images. Of course, if you are lucky enough to be able to do it during a solar eclipse, you can get dozens of crescent-shaped pinhole images.



But the point is the mystery: since the leaves are not full of perfectly round holes, why does the light shining through them produce round spots of light?

[nisiprius]

This isn't a science experiment but a random synaptic firing brought it to mind, and it's cool for kids that age if they don't know it already. It's a (rather unfair) riddle. "Can you find the mushroom on the dollar bills?" You do it by folding it in the manner of the old Mad Al Jaffee "fold-ins" to juxtapose the top of Washington's head with his neck:



And now I'll make for it with a real science experiment. You can actually do it with a feather if you can find one and it's nice and flat, but otherwise a small piece of paper will do. A playing card works well. It is a demonstration that light and heavy objects actually do fall at the same speed. First you drop them separately, and the book falls with a loud bang! while the card flutters down. Now you lay the card flat on the center of the book and drop the book, holding it pretty level. The book falls with a loud bang! and the card falls with it. There's a small vacuum behind the book and the card isn't affected by air resistance.

[GCD]

A simple trebuchet is interesting to build (though hard to do successfully).

"Build a Catapult in Your Backyard" by Bill Wilson published by Loompanics Unlimited has pretty good plans if you are completely new to this, but honestly, there are schematics all over the internet. I would also recommend "Backyard Ballistics" by William Gurstelle, but maybe the table of contents is again all you need since there are schematics for all kinds of things online these days.

When they're a couple of years older you might consider fermentation and distillation for an introduction to the life sciences.

LOL!!! His kids are 8 and 6!


On another note, we always had great fun just going for walks off the beaten path and identifying all sorts of plants, insects and animals. When we lived in a very urban area (Dublin, CA) we were right across the street from a small creek. We caught a lot of crayfish and found owl pellets, etc. while wading down the middle of this urban creek. We never encountered anyone else actually in the creek. We used a lot of Peterson's Field Guides of all types.

[Beensabu]

There's a pretty big list here that should take all summer to do:

https://www.weareteachers.com/easy-science-experiments/

[Teague]

When they're a couple of years older you might consider fermentation and distillation for an introduction to the life sciences.

LOL!!! His kids are 8 and 6!

I'm always reading about U.S. students falling behind on various metrics. Not if I have anything to say about it!


For my 8th grade science project I chose to build a countercurrent water-cooled still out of two different diameters of copper tubing, one ran inside the other, and of course I did the soldering myself. My in-class demonstration featured only distilling colored water to clear, while the real action happened at home: Fermenting cracked corn and sugar, distilling the resultant alcohol, and using some of that product for the alcohol lamp to heat the mash and continue the process. The alcohol tasted terrible I will admit, but it burned great!

[Rocky Mtn Man]

A weather station can teach a lot. Fereinheit versus Celcius, wind direction and speed measurments, humidity, dew point. Maybe solar radiance as well.

[safari]

Here is a super easy science experiment, which kids think is magic.

https://youtu.be/65T4ReLkjCg

[nisiprius]

You never know what is going to work, but "access to tools" is helpful. You should be sure they each own an appropriate hand lens. I'm saying "hand lens" because I think it's better than the things sold as "magnifying glasses" (not strong enough and don't fit into pockets) or "loupes" (too strong and a little tricky to use). My favorite for my own use looks like this, I spotted it in Staples. It's biggish, all three magnifications work pretty well, works best if held up the eye like a loupe but at least it will work the other way (close to the object).

Plus it's cool seeing how you can increase the power by stacking the lenses.

Focal length is convenient for forming images of windows or ceiling lights. I haven't checked to be sure but I think it would not work as a burning glass which might be considered a plus.

If you have a second magnifying glass or a hand lens with a different power, you can hold this up to your eye and hold the other magnifying glass a little way away and make a Hans Lippershey-type telescope with an upside-down view.



They ought to have access to binoculars, but it's confusing because binoculars are hard to kids to use. It's hard to get the interpupillary right, it's hard to work the center focus, and it's hard to tell if they are seeing anything. These are very interesting but pricey. I bought a pair for my grandson when he was four years old:



They do not focus! They do not need to be focussed! They have an incredibly wide field of view. They have huge exit pupils which means they work even if you don't have your eyes and the binoculars lined up just right. They have huge eye relief, important if by any chance the kid wears glasses. The optical quality is great. The interpupillary was OK for our grandson--but I would say you want to be sure you have return privileges. They are only four power, which is what makes the other things possible. The point is that they actually work. Kids can really see through them. The only "problem" is that with a kid's young eyes they can actually use them at distances like 20 or 30 feet--they are supposed to be for >150'--and I had to keep telling my grandson he was not allowed to look through them while walking. Plus not to look anywhere near the sun.

They are a gazillion times better than any kids' binoculars you find in a toy department or even a museum store.

[nisiprius]

If you can find an old camera, preferably broken and preferably pre-electronic, and a set of jewelers' screwdrivers, have them take a camera apart... under supervision. It takes some adult cleverness to figure out how.

If you have a little portable backyard wading pool, fill it exactly full, have them get in so the water is displaced and spills over the side, then read or tell them about Archimedes. (No, you may not run naked down the street yelling "Eureka!")

[campy2010]

I love the book suggestion upthread by leeks. Many kids’ science ‘experiments’ aren’t really true experiments in the model of scientific inquiry. Try to develop their scientific creativity using the scientific method - what are their questions, what is their hypothesis around that question, how could we design and experiment to test if the hypothesis is true, what is their observation of the outcome and their thoughts about why is that the case. The US school system doesn’t do a great job of teaching science this way.

For example, using someone’s example just building a catapult isn’t really science. But it’s a good way to explore and observe hypotheses around motion. What trajectory and distance do objects of similar size but different masses take? Run the experiment and measure the outcome. Compare the results to objects different sizes with similar masses. Discuss what forces are impacting the different outcomes.

[CaptainT]

Get a roll of foil, and a bunch of some waterproof item I suggest clementines but almost anything will work. Fill sink with water. Measure out 3 ft of foil for everyone. Each builds a container to float max number of clementine.
Teaches things like Displacement and engineering

[Swee'pea]

I've enjoyed reading the replies.

A few more ideas:

National, state and local parks have science programs, including archeological digs.

Not an experiment, but there is a lot to be observed and learned from actively gardening. Container gardens on a deck or window ledge are only a step away, and can be examined every day. You don’t have to wait long for leaf lettuce and herb seeds to germinate and be ready for eating. I have re-purposed many old household items into tiny vegetable/herb gardens for children (battered kitchen sieves, flour sifter w/broken handle, watering cans w/holey bottoms, etc.). Here are directions to build a more substantial salad box or table. https://extension.umd.edu/resource/grow ... ad-boxestm

Also fun, vermiculture!

Depending on where you live, you may experience the next major emergence of periodical cicada broods XIII or XIX in spring of 2024. You could join the citizen scientists who track their appearance. Bonus question, why is the brood life cycle a prime number (17 years and 13 years, respectively)?

[watchnerd]

Stick broccoli in a glass of water and watch it bloom flowers

[JPM]

Janice van Cleave published a series of science books for kids with about 100 experiments in each book (Chemistry for every Kid, Physics for every Kid, Astronomy for every Kid, etc). DW used these as a gifted education teacher in grades 3-5. The chemistry book uses common household materials to cleverly illustrate chemical and physical science principles. Ms van Cleave was a high school chemistry and science teacher in Texas. The books date from the late 80s and early 90s.

Example for the Chemistry book;
#28
Purpose: To demonstrate that gravity has little effect on bodies submerged in a liquid.

Materials;
1 clear drinking glass
1/2 cup rubbing alchohol
1/2 cup water
Liquid cooking oil
eyedropper

Procedure;
Pour 1/2 cup water into the glass
Tilt the glass and very slowly pour in 1/2 cup alcohol being careful not to shake the glass. If you shake the glass, the alcohol and water will mix.
Fill the eyedropper with cooking oil
Place the tip of the dropper below the surface of the top alcohol layer and squeeze out several drops of oil

Results;
The alcohol forms a layer on top of the water. The drops of oil form perfect spheres that float in the center below the alcohol and on top of the water.

Why?
Alcohol is lighter and floats on top of the water if the two are combined very carefully. Oil is heavier than alcohol but lighter than water; thus the oil drops float between the two liquids. Gravity does not affect the drops because they are surrounded by liquid molecules that are pulling on them equally in all directions.Oil molecules pull on each other forming a shape that presents the smallest surface area; a sphere.

[JPH]

Catch some tadpoles and watch them metamorphize.

[Nver2Late]

If you have a piece of flexible tubing, you can make a syphon. You can show the kids how to make water run uphill.

I think back to when I learned how to syphon (gas) on the farm from my Dad as a kid. I tried to show my teenage daughters how to syphon gas several years ago, but I was too late - they had already learned the "Ricky" version from "Trailer Park Boys".

[SurferLife]

following

[BashDash]

Thank you for all the great suggestions!

[SpaghettiLegs]

Let’s see, it’s been many years, but one of our favorites was the homemade air powered rocket. Get a one liter plastic water/soda bottle, make some stabilizing fins. Those also should raise it off the ground a few inches in launch mode. I think we also made a pointy nose cone to make it look better. Get one of those needles used to pump up a ball and force it through a wine cork. Fill the bottle about 1/4 to 1/3 full of water, place the cork in the bottle opening with needle attached to a bike pump. Place in launch position and pump away! We got some pretty impressive launches, 100+ feet up.

Another cool one is to take an empty soda can, using tongs and oven mitt hold it with opening facing down in a pot of boiling water. Take the can out and quickly place opening side down in a bowl of ice water. Causes the can to immediately collapse pancake flat.

[Swee'pea]

...



They do not focus! They do not need to be focused! They have an incredibly wide field of view. ...

Thank you, thank you! I just rec'd a pair for my birthday (after strong hints). I have life long vision problems and can not focus and track with any binoculars I've tried. These work great for my purposes. mostly scanning fields and tree tops for wildlife and other natural features. The image is clear. Also, they are currently on sale for about $77.