Summer Science with Kiddos🔬

If you don’t know already, I am a nanny for 3 crazy, wonderful kiddos. The 2 oldest are boys and ages 5 and 7. So this summer I wanted to do some cool (but easy) science experiments with them. They were all pretty cool and super simple! And I enjoyed seeing the boys’ faces light up! Here are the ones we did.

Side Note: They all came from Pinterest so don’t hesitate to look them up on there

1) RAIN CLOUD EXPERIMENT

I think this one was their favorite! They asked to do it again several times lol

You need:

•Shaving cream

•Food colors

•Water

•Medium sized container (one for each child)

•Small cups

•Eye dropper or medicine syringe

What To Do:

1) Fill medium container(s) with water.

2) Mix up your food colors with water in small cups.

3) Squirt shaving cream over top of water filled container to make “clouds”.

4) Give droppers or syringes to the participants and let them fill it with a color, then squirt into shaving cream clouds.

5) Watch it come through the shaving cream and down like rain into the container.

6) Repeat with different colors

2) CRYSTALIZED SHAPES

We did an airplane and a train shape but star shapes look really cool too. This one requires some patience because it takes up to 24 hours for it to be done crystallizing.

You Need:

•Mason jar/large pickle jar/something similar

•2 cups Boiling Water

•1/2 cup Borax

•Popsicle Sticks

•String

•Pipe cleaners

•Cookie Cutter Shapes of your choosing

What To Do:

1) Wrap your pipe cleaner around the cookie cutter shape of your choice. Then twist the ends together so it keeps its shape.

2) Tie a string around the shape so it hangs from the popsicle stick.

3) Place popsicle stick with hanging shape on top of jar so that the pipe cleaner shape is now hanging inside.

Here is a great picture of how it should look from https://onelittleproject.com/how-to-make-crystal-stars/

4) Pour boiling water into jar (adults only) and then pour in borax and stir so it dissolves. Depending on the size of your jar, you might need to adjust the amount of water and borax. But it’s a 1/2 cup of borax to every 2 cups of water. You want your shapes to be totally submerged.

5) Now wait ….Within 6-8 hours you should see crystals forming on the pipecleaners. After 24 hours, remove and place on a paper towel to dry.

Hang them somewhere the light can glisten on them 😊

3) POP ROCK BALLOON

Putting pop rocks in soda creates a gas that fills up the balloon. I bought all the items at the Dollar Tree to save $. Yay for Dollar Tree!

You Need:

•Pop Rocks

•Unopened Soda Bottle

•Balloon

•Funnel

What To Do:

1) Fill balloon with bag of pop rocks using funnel.

2) Attach balloon filled with pop rocks to the top of the opened soda bottle. Be careful not to dump the pop rocks in yet.

3) When ready, tilt ballon up so pop rocks slide into soda bottle. Watch balloon expand!

I bought 2 sodas so we could do it twice. Then we blew up the extra balloons in the bag and drew silly faces on them lol

4) MINI COLORED VOLCANOES

This one was fun! You take a muffin tin, put a different colored drop of food coloring in each tin, then cover it with a spoonful of baking soda.

I gave the kids a squeeze bottle full of vinegar.

When they would squirt the vinegar into each muffin tin, it would erupt into a pretty color!

They had fun guessing which color it was going to be before squirting it in. Super simple, super fun!

5) MAGIC MILK

The supplies you need for this one are probably around your house! The only thing I didn’t have was q-tips but I made my own with toothpicks and cotton balls.

You Need:

•Shallow dish

•Milk

•Food coloring (the liquid drop kind)

•Dish Soap

•Q-tips

What To Do:

1) Pour a little milk in the shallow dish.

2) Drop different food colors in various spots on top of the milk.

3) Dip your q-tip in dish soap and then into the milk.

4) Viola! Beautiful swirling colors

If you pick up your q-tip and put it down again in a different spot, it will continue to swirl. We did this experiment 3x. The boys loved it!

And that was our summer of science experiments!

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Shape Hunt & Scavenger Hunt

A few ideas for keeping small people busy! The boys are loving these 2 games right now. And the great part is there’s not much prep to them.

Shape Hunt – The object of this game is to find the shapes hidden or placed around the room. Draw some shapes, cut them out, add tape, and BAM! Endless fun 🙂

Try to “hide” the shapes at eye level for younger ones

I traced the shapes onto another paper so they could put them in their place as they found them. It helped them to see what shapes were left to find too.

Steps to Play:
1) Cut out shapes
2) Trace shapes on another paper
3) Add tape to cut out shapes (painter’s tape works great)
4) One person counts to 20 0r 30 while the other person puts the shapes around the room
5) Person counting finds shapes and matches them to their spot on the paper

Scavenger Hunt – The object of this game is to find the listed items. Here are a few examples. The boxes at the end are for the boys to check off when they’ve found that item.

I’ve found that this is a great way to talk about textures, patterns, shapes in everyday objects, and using your senses. Depending on the age the scavenger can be made easier or more difficult.

Have fun!!!!