A couple weeks ago my son was home sick from school and it was pouring rain outside so we took to the kitchen to do some science. I had serendipitously found a book at the library called, Kitchen Experiments the week before, and my son found it while he was home sick.
One of the experiments that we did was super simple and my two year old could do it easily. You need milk, food colors, toothpick, and liquid dish soap.
1. Get a shallow bowl or container and place about 1/4 inch of milk in it.
2. Put a few drops of food color spaced around on the milk.
3. Touch the tip of the toothpick into the dish soap .
4. Dip the tip of the toothpick into the milk in the center of one of the drops of food coloring (do not stir just touch it).
5. Watch the food coloring spread out.
6. Try doing it in different places around and watch how the colors mix.
7. Talk about what is happening, how the colors are moving quickly, swirling, and mixing. The soap is bipolar with one part being hydrophilic (water-loving) and the other part being hydrophobic (water-fearing). This means that one part (the hydrophilic part) dissolves in the water content of the milk, while the hydrophobic part of the soap attaches to the fat in the milk. This causes all kinds of movement in the milk. (Get a more complete explanation in the book or at this website).
8. This is a great way to see molecules in action! Of course most of this goes right over the kids heads at 2 and 5 but they really enjoyed seeing the colors moving and as they get older and we continue to do things like this they will get more adept at understanding all about what is going on to cause these reactions.
This activity is great for learning science, colors, action and reaction, vocabulary building. Overall the book has some great simple experiments with explanations about what is going on. My son was loving it!
Before I get into the craft part of this post I just wanted to show you the hair cut that my son decided to give my daughter. The day before I had finally gotten all of her hair up into pigtails which made this event very sad for me :( However, it will grow back and it looks okay now (I just really liked the pig tails).
So we went to get her the first real hair cut she has ever had that morning. I told my husband (and several friends), I think it is payback for when I gave a friend a hair cut when I was about the same age as my son is now. You can see what it ended up looking like in the next set of photos.
On to the craft.
This is a really easy craft that is perfect for spring. We ended up doing this on spring equinox instead of what I had been planning because it was snowing that day (that was unexpected).
Supplies you need:
Background paper (like white or light blue construction paper but you can use what you like)
Paper bag or brown construction paper
Pink tissue paper (or whatever colors you like)
Glue
Scissors
- Cut a strip of paper from the paper bag that will be the trunk of the tree so it should be about 1/3 the height of the background paper and about an inch wide.
- Cut out branches from the paper, they need to fit on the paper coming off the trunk, ours were anywhere from 2-5 inches long and about 1/4-1/2 inch wide.
- Crinkle the branches and trunk to give the texture like bark.
- Glue them onto the background paper
- Crinkle up small bits of tissue paper and glue them onto the branches.
Some things to talk about while you are doing this craft.
- Discuss how spring is when the trees start to get flowers and leaves again.
- Talk about the part of the tree: the roots, trunk, branches, flower, leaves.
- Talk about other plants that are growing during spring like tulips, daffodils, grass (are you having to mow the lawn again yet?)
- Talk about how animals start to get more active at this time of year. Bees come out and start gathering the nectar from flowers pollinating them, birds start making nests and laying eggs, geese travel north again, bears come out of hibernation, etc.
All that talking makes this simple craft a vocabulary builder and an opportunity to learn about science too! This craft also is great for fine motor skills.
Most of all have fun!
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Have fun!
