Simple Science – Craft Caravan

Simple Science: Botany for Kids – Dissect a Flower

June 19, 2016 admin

We’re having some Fun with Flowers this month in the Kids Craft Club, and studying a real flower is a great extension to our craft time fun! We found a beautiful bearded iris in our yard, and took it apart to understand the complex system that makes a flower grow. This is a good tactile experiment for the kids – they can feel the flower parts as they learn. It’s also handy to have a sketch pad nearby so that the kids can draw what they see. A microscope or magnifying glass will give the kids a closer look.

Bearded Iris in the Garden Our Iris in the Garden

Tip: If you can, find one flower per little person in addition to your flower, so that each child can spend time feeling the flower and participating without worry about damage.

We started by counting the petals on our flower – Flowers with petals in multiples of three are called monocots. Flowers with petals in multiples of four or five are dicots. What kind of flower do you have? Things you can do: Draw a flower with the same number of petals as yours. Draw flowers with petals in groups of three, and with petals that are in multiples of four or five.
We gently removed the petals to take a closer look at the rest of the flower. Things you can do: Feel the petals – what do they feel like? Are all the petals the same? Our flower had 3 dark purple petals with ‘beards’ and three light purple petals. The bearded petals look fancy, which might attract insects to help pollinate the flower. If your flower has two kinds of petals, do the different petals feel different from each other?

Once you’ve studied the flower petals, have a look at the rest of your flower. You can learn about the reproductive parts of the flower. These are the parts that help the flower make seeds which can become new flowers:


The Stamen is the part that looks like a miniature scrubber brush! It has a long handle or filament and a brush tip or anther that holds the pollen.	The Pistil is at the base of the flower – the top of the pistil is the Stigma. It’s the clearish-white part at the flower base, and it carries the pollen down through the stem.

We gently removed the last remaining petals to count the Stamen on our flower. How many are on your flower? Things you can do: gently touch the top of the stamen. What does it feel like? When you take your fingers away, is there any powdery pollen on your fingers? What colour is it? If you have a magnifying glass, use it to look at the pollen. What does it look like when it’s magnified?
An adult can carefully slice down the centre of the stem and open up the flower. What can you see? Now you can see the rest of the pistil – pollen get carried down the hollow body or style to the ovary, where the pollen fertilizes the flower’s eggs. Can you see any tiny eggs? These would be the seeds of the flower after they’re fertilized by the pollen!

Simple Science: Make a Crystal Snowflake

June 18, 2016 admin

Here’s a simple science experiment to do at home or with the whole class. Grow crystal snowflakes! Learn about crystals and keep the finished products to decorate your room or classroom.

Supplies:

pipecleaner, cut into 3 equal length pieces
string or yarn
500 ml yogurt container or mason jar
hot or boiling water
borax
pencil or dowel

What to do:

Twist the pipecleaners together in the centre of each piece, and move ends around to make a star shape.
Wrap one end of string around a point of your ‘snowflake’. Then carry string to next point and wrap & continue to next point etc. Wrap string around all points until back to the first point. Then make a loop of string and secure the other end to pencil or dowel.
Pour boiling water into yogurt container or mason jar. Add 3 tablespoons of borax for every cup of water. Stir to dissolve mixture.
Hang snowflake in water overnight. The dowel or pencil can sit across the jar or container opening to keep the snowflake suspended.
Check on your snowflake the next day – it should be a crystally snowflake!

How this works:

When water is heated up, the water molecules move more quickly and spread apart, so the Borax (sodium borate) can easily dissolve. When the water cools down, the water molecules start to move back together again, and the Borax starts to settle out. Crystals start to form on top of each other and will cling to the pipecleaners in the water, creating a beautiful snowflake!

Simple Science: Cartesian Diver, learning about buoyancy

June 18, 2016 admin

Do this fun experiment/ game to learn about buoyancy and air pressure.

Cartesian Diver game with water bottle for kids

Supplies:

2 hex nuts
2 pipettes
2 wires (we used red and blue)
1 500ml plastic bottle with lid
water

Snip the pipettes about 2/3 of the way up. You will be using the bulb part.
Slip the hex nut onto the pipette bulb and screw it onto the base of the bulb to secure it
Wrap one end of blue wire around stem stump of pipette, curving the other end to make a hook
Wrap the red wire around end of second pipette, starting at the stem, looping it around top of pipette bulb, and securing back at the stem

make a cartesian diver

5. Fill each pipette about 1/2 full with water by squeezing bulb, putting into water, and releasing bulb.

6. Test the buoyancy of each pipette bulb – fill the red one with enough water to make it sink in a cup of water. It will probably be just over half full with water. Fill the blue pipette so that it floats in a cup of water, just below the surface. Ajust water levels in each pipette to get correct buoyancy.

testing cartesian diver experiment for kids

To play the game:

Fill a 500 ml bottle with water. Drop the red pipette into the bottle. It should sink to the bottom. Drop the blue pipette into the bottle. It should float almost at the surface. Make sure the bottle is completely full with water, and secure lid. Gently squeeze bottle. When you squeeze the bottle, the floating pipette should dive down. Try to hook the pipette that is sunk, and bring it to the surface!

make a game to play using science

How it works:

Buoyancy: when your pipette is less dense than the water it is in, the pipette will float. When the pipette is more dense than the water it’s in, it will sink. The combination of nut + water + air in the pipette will be just heavy enough to sink if you add more water, and float if you add less.

Pressure: When you squeeze the bottle, you are increasing the pressure, making the air trapped in your pipette compress, which means more water can creep into the pipette. This makes it makes less buoyant causing it to sink. When you release your squeeze, the air expands, pushing water out of the pipette, making it more buoyant so it floats.

Simple Science for Kids – St. Patricks Day Fools Gold

June 18, 2016June 18, 2016 admin

Test whether the pennies you find at the end of your rainbow are more valuable than just a cent!

Supplies: paper towel, plastic lid, vinegar, pennies

What to do:

Fold the paper towel into a small square and soak it generously with white vinegar. Place soaked towel on a plastic lid and place the pennies on top of the towel.

Test your pennies to see if they're more valuable than a penny

Check your pennies regularly over the next few hours to see if the towel or the pennies themselves are changing colour. Is anything turning green?

If your penny turns the paper towel green, or if it turns green itself, then it has a high percentage of COPPER in it. The vinegar helps create a reaction between the copper in the penny, and oxygen in the air, making things turn green!

Chemistry for Kids: Simple St. Patrick's Day Fools Gold test
Tip: to see even more green, dip the pennies entirely into vinegar and then place them on the paper towel to dry. If you’re doing this at preschool or daycare, do it at the start of the day and check results throughout the day.

In the USA, pennies were made with 95% copper until 1982. Then copper became more valuable than the penny itself, so they started making pennies out of mostly zinc.

In Canada, pennies were made with 98% copper until 1996. After that, they started being made out of 98% zinc.

If your penny turned green, it has more copper in it than a penny that doesn’t change colour! It’s copper value is worth more than just 1 cent!

Simple Science for Kids – Spring Break Volcano Eruption

June 18, 2016 admin

There are sure to be at least one or two eruptions in your household over spring break, so why not make your own!! Here’s a great way to pass the morning with your kids while on spring break. Once the volcano is built, you can make it erupt over and over again – we kept ours around for a few days!

To make your volcano, you will need:

Salt Dough:

3 cups flour
1 cup salt
2 tablespoons oil
~ 1 cup water

Volcano form & lava:

warm water with a few drops red food colouring
2 tbsp baking soda
1/2 cup to 1 cup vinegar
large baking sheet with a rimmed edge (could use a 9×13 cake pan instead)
Clean, empty soup can (10 oz) You could use an empty pop bottle instead, but we liked the can because it was easy for my son to manage building around it and pouring ingredients in the wide opening without any help, and it’s small enough to get a quick ‘eruption’

Mix the salt dough:

Make salt dough home made play dough Measure Dry ingredients

how to make homemade playdough

Add the wet ingredients

making home made play dough

Stir to combine, then knead until smooth. You may need to add more flour or water if too wet or too dry

making a play dough volcano

Play Dough ready for modeling our volcano

To make the volcano:

Kids science experiments how to make volcano

Place clean can in centre of baking sheet. Form dough around can in a cone shape

Kids Science experiment - volcano eruption

My guy decided to carve some flow lines into his volcano (from where it had previously erupted, he explained)

Science for Kids - Making a volcano

Fill can with warm coloured water to ~ 3/4 full

Volcano experiment with kids

Add 2 tbsp baking soda and stir to mix. Now for the fun part:

ADD VINEGAR!

Simple Science experiment for kids volcano eruption

Watch the lava flow over the volcano! You can add more vinegar once the eruption settles down. We did this over and over again! Might have to dump everything out and start with more baking soda if your volcano no longer erupts.

Simple Science: Colour Mixing Magic

June 16, 2016 admin

If you’re looking for a simple way to teach kids about primary colours and color mixing, give this simple experiement a try!

Supplies: ice cube trays, food colouring, clear or white cups, stir sticks, water

Set Up (prior to experiment): Put a few drops of red, blue, and yellow food colouring into three separate containers and add water. Pour coloured waters into ice cube containers and freeze.

The Experiment: Pop a coloured cube out of the ice cube tray and into a cup. You can stir the single ice cube to watch it melt if you like. Add another ice cube (of a different colour) and continue stirring so both cubes start melting. How do the colours mix?

Kids Science mixing colours

Rainbow Theme or Colour theme activity Simple Science mixing colours

Things to talk about: How do the colours mix? Make a colour chart showing how the primary colours make other colours, ie. red + blue, red + yellow, yellow + blue. What happens if you mix two of the secondary colours together? What is your favourite colour and how do you think you can make it, starting with the three primaries?

Other (non-colour) things to talk about: What happens when you stir the ice cubes? Does it make the ice melt faster or slower?

One of our favourite teachers tried this with her class: ” I used one of your Craft Caravan ideas a few weeks ago with my students. It was a great hands on way to teach the magic of primary colours. I made ice cubes with a few drops of colour in each. Thanks for the idea.”