THE NOSTALGIECAT SUMMER KIDS CLUB....

 

....Session 4: SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS

 

Welcome to session 4 of the Nostalgiecat Summer Kids Club, today's theme is Science Experiments...

...nothing fancy, but we had some fun mixing things together to see what happens...

In today's post I  will show you what me and Little Miss Moo and her friends, Caleb, Tristan and Scarlett got up to on Monday...

 The first thing we tried out was...

 

MAGIC MILK

 

The science behind this experiment is probably too complicated to explain to a 4 year old, but you can read all about it here ....

To do this, you will need:

Full fat milk

bowl

food colouring

washing up liquid

q-tips

Poor a little milk into the bowl...just enough to cover the bottom. Add a few drops of food colouring in the centre of the milk...DON'T MIX.... Dip a Q-tip into the washing up liquid, then gently tap the surface of the coloured milk with the soapy q-tip....

We tried doing this experiment....unfortunately it didn't quite work for us: The colours are supposed to start "swirling" on their own as soon as the washing up liquid comes in contact with the food colouring in the milk....but for us it only made a ring  in the coloured milk...

Great start hey??

 If you want to see how it is supposed to turn out, click on the link above..

 

Caleb was never the less fascinated to see the colour shrink back in the milk....Why don't you try it and see what happens....maybe you can get it right?

 

Next we tried out making some...

OOBLECK

...Sounds exotic doesn't it? and it is....very strange stuff, but soo easy to make!!

Have you ever heard about being able to walk on custard?? It is true: you can!! And this stuff has the same properties : it is a liquid, but when you apply some impact pressure, it behaves like a solid...

Try this out, all you need is:

2cups corn flour

1 cup water

food colouring (just for fun)

Mix it all together....it will be tough to mix, so put some elbow grease into it..

....then let the kids gently dip their fingers in, like Tristan in the picture above, just to check it is actually liquid, before slapping or punching it to experience the liquid as a solid...

Scarlett tries "punching" the OOBLECK... 

....this experiment is sure to amaze!!

For our next experiment, you can re-use the OOBLECK mix by adding some more corn flour and a bit of Shampoo (and some more food colouring)....

 

SLIME

...But if you want to make it from scratch (or the kids have "played away" the OOBLECK mix), here's what you will need:

2 1/2 Cups Corn flour

6 table spoons water

1/2 cup shampoo

food colouring

Mix the shampoo and food colouring together, add the corn flour, then add the water...little by little..

It will be hard work, as Caleb found out, but keep mixing it until you get a sort of "dough" that can be rolled up into a ball...

The funny thing is, that once you have rolled your ball, watch it "melt" through your fingers...

Like the OOBLECK it is half solid/ half liquid and behaves equally confusing....The shampoo will add some elasticity , so it can be stretched like slime...

 

Lots of fun!!

Tristan and Scarlett tried to roller the slime, only to find that it turned to solid....but when they tried to pick it up from the table, it turned back into slime...

After cleaning up the mess (while the kids had some juice and biscuits)...YES- it did get quite messy,

 but it was easy to clean up.... 

...we had a go at making some....

LAVA LAMPS

You probably remember these from the 90's....hypnotic lamps with blobs of colour floating around inside...Our DIY version is not quite as psycadellic, but never the less, fascinating....

Here's what you'll need:

Empty water bottle

Cooking oil

Water

Alka-Seltzer's tablets

food colouring

Fill the bottle 1/4 full with water, the top up with the oil, leaving 1" at the top..... wait for the oil to settle on top of the water....

 Add some watercolour, and let it sink through the oil and mix with the water.

Break up an Alka-Seltzer's tablet into bits, and add 1 piece at the time and let this sink to the bottom of the bottle...

The Alka-Seltzer's releases small bubbles of carbon dioxide gas that rise to the top taking some of the coloured water along through the oil...the gas escapes when it reaches the top and the coloured water falls back down through the oil.

Enjoy the show!

You can add more Alka-Seltzer's to keep the reaction going...even at a later stage.

We also had a look at what happened when we screwed the top back on the bottle (tightly!!!) and tipped the bottle back and forth....like Scarlett in the picture above...and when the bottle got vigorously shaken.... 

The next experiment we did was

MARBLED PAINTING WITH OIL

We did this in plastic zip-lock bags , to minimise the mess, but to be honest, I think this would have been a lot more fun if we had just used some soup bowls....

Anyway, Here's what you'll need:

Zip lock plastic bags (or soup bowls)

Baby oil

2 different colour paints (poster paint is fine)

glitter

Pour some baby oil into the zip lock bag/bowl, then add two colours of paint and some glitter (to make it sparkly).

If you have decided to do this in a bowl, let the kids go ahead and use their fingers to "marble" the paint, by swirling the colours together...

If you want to keep your kids mess free, and are using a zip lock bag, make sure you squeeze out as much air as possible before zipping the bag shut....I secured the seal by using some gaffer tape, to prevent any leaks....then let the kids move the paint around with their fingers to create a marble effect...

I don't really know why I was trying to minimise the mess when we did the MARBLED PAINTING, as the next thing we made was really messy....and really fun:

FLUBBER

This is just as stretchy and weird as the SLIME we made earlier, but with a completely different consistency and feel to it...

Here's what you'll need:

1 Cup White school Glue

3/4 Cup cold water

food colouring

2 bowls

1/2 Cup hot water

1 Table spoon Borax

A little note on Borax:

Borax is a natural mineral and a common household chemical found in laundry detergent and hand soaps...it is marked as toxic, but this only really applies if ingested in very, very high doses...It is not absorbed by the skin, and as we were only using a small amount, I was happy that it would not cause the children any harm...

Read more about Borax here , if you are concerned...

Mix the glue and the cold water + food colouring in one bowl.

In the other bowl, dissolve the Borax in the hot water...

Slowly add the glue-mix to the Borax water and stir....

The glue mix will kind off set and slightly solidify when in contact with the Borax water...

Poor out any excess water, and you will be left with a slimy gelly like lump...

....the kids loved stretching it....

 

....and squeezing it...

...and it generally made for some sticky, messy fun...

The last "experiment" we did, was to make some beautiful...

SUNCATCHERS

 ....to take home to mum...

You will need:

Plastic beads

Oven proof muffin tray

Oven

Pour a handful of plastic beads into each dip in the muffin tray, then cook in the oven at

 200 degrees (C) for about 40-45 minutes, until the beads have melted.

Make sure you have your windows wide open for ventilation, as there will be some fumes coming off the beads as they are melting....ask the kids to vacate the room!!!

I asked the kids what they thought would happen to the beads when cooked in the oven....and Scarlett thought they might rise like a dough, but Caleb thought they might shrink..

I explained how most solid things will either melt or burn when exposed to high temperatures...

As soon as the beads had melted, I carried the muffin tray outside , so that our sun catchers could cool down quickly....

I didn't get time to do this for Little Miss Moo's friends before their mums came to pick them up, but here's what I did with ours:

I used a 2ml drill bit and drilled a hole in each disc, then used some colourful embroidery thread to suspend them from a bit of driftwood I found on my stroll along the Thames the other week...

Would look great hung up in a sunny window...what do you think??

For more fun science experiments for kids or other great activities, please visit my pinterest board

http://pinterest.com/juneolsenwalker/kids-crafts-and-fun/

We had lots of fun with our science session...

I cant believe that next weeks session will be the last one this summer...

where has the time gone??

I'd love to hear about what you have got up to with the kids over the holidays to keep them entertained....

Please leave a comment below...

There is also still time to enter the PRICEDRAW in my lace print plates GIVEAWAY...

...just leave a comment at the bottom of the blogpost  a celebration to be in with a chance...

  xxx

Junes