science for kids – 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: 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.”