Children love sciences
Age-appropriate: 3+ years
Early Years Foundation Stage: Understanding the world, mathematics, communication and language and personal development
Skills trained: problem solving, being imaginative, understanding, shape, space and measure, technology
At the Big Ben Kids Preschool (3-4 years old) group the focus was on science and therefore also on the scientist profession. Children are curious by nature, however it is easy for us adults to forget about so called “barrier of obviousness”. What is obvious to us our children still have to discover, and those discoveries will impact the rest of their lives. So let’s make them fall in love in science!
Science experiment I / Imitate rainclouds
This experiment gives young children a chance to explore clouds and rain in a hands-on and engaging way! If you are looking for a simple and easy science activity to do with the kids, this is perfect for you. Ask the kids to pick up some colored water with a pipette and squirt it on top of the shaving cream cloud. Repeat this step one or two more times, but pay close attention to what is happening below the cloud! The colored water will begin to seep down through the shaving foam and into the water below. Just like rain! Placing the colored drops on top of the shaving foam with a use of pipettes was an excellent hand-eye coordination practice. As the drops merge with water it looks like a rain cloud broke.
What do you need:
- Transparent container or jar and water
- Shaving foam
- Food colouring
- Pipettes or droppers
Science experiment II / Floating and Sinking
Floating and sinking is a fun science concept for children to explore. This sink or float experiment is a simple physics experiment that will encourage your child to make predictions and observations about buoyancy and density. Through their observations, they’ll learn that buoyant objects float and dense objects sink, and if they want to be true little scientists, they can even record their predictions. Set up a floating and sinking learning tray. Invite children to play, experiment and explore how and why different objects float and sink when placed into water.
What do you need:
- Coloured pens and paper to create a floating and sinking chart
- Bowl or bucket with water
- Several (small) objects that can float or sink, such as:
- Key
- Toy car
- Corks
- Duplo / Lego
- Cutlery
- Sponge
- Crayon
- Ping-Pong ball
- Feather
- Coins