Making science fun for kids

Making science fun for kids

By Oli Ryan

Find more education articles in our May/June issue found at the bottom of the page

The science of cooking Learning about science in a meaningful context—the food we prepare and eat—is a great way for children to explore new scientific ideas and relate them to other things they already understand. Baking bread, cakes or biscuits is enjoyable and children will learn about irreversible changes as milk, butter, eggs and flour combine to form a new, delicious substance. Making lollipops is a great way to explore freezing and melting. Churning butter is an easy activity during which children can learn about the science of preserving food and have something tasty to eat afterwards. This traditional method of preserving dairy products has been used by civilisations throughout human history. The ancient Sumerians, Greeks, Romans and Vikings all churned butter, to name a few. To make your own butter with your children, all you need is some double cream and some clean jam jars for 'churning.' Your children will enjoy shaking their jars and seeing the butter and buttermilk gradually separate out from the cream. Once churned, get your children to wash the butter in cold water, pat it dry, then mix it with a little salt to help preserve it for longer. The finished butter can be wrapped in foil and kept in the fridge for several days. This simple experiment raises lots of good scientific questions such as 'where did the butter and buttermilk come from', 'why does shaking the cream make them separate' and 'why does salt help preserve the butter.' If you want to learn more about the science behind making butter, have a look at Viking Science at https://bit.ly/3tO3Iio Outdoor science Any outdoor space—whether your own garden or a public park—provides many opportunities for scientific exploration. Outside, children can see how the changing of the seasons affects growth and life, hunt for mini-beasts (such as woodlice and centipedes), experience wind resistance and measure changes in weather. Look out for signs of new life in the spring such as new leaf buds. Find flowering plants and seeds in the summer, and observe the changing colours of the leaves in autumn. Identify, draw and describe creepy-crawlies found under rocks, then learn more about them in books or online. Make paper pinwheels or fly kites to see and feel the wind blowing, or a rain gauge to measure rainfall in your garden or on your balcony. Bath time science Bath time is another opportunity for scientific discovery. What differences do your children notice between water, shower gel and toothpaste? How do they feel different when you rub them between your fingers? What happens when soaps and other gels are mixed with water? Toilet paper can be used to study chromatography. Mark a dot in the centre of a piece of toilet paper with a felt pen. Add a drop of water, and pop the sheet on a plate. In a few minutes, the water separates the ink into separate pigments, creating a beautiful pattern. Try it with a range of felt pens and colours! For a fizzy, rapid chemical reaction, chuck a bath bomb in with the kids. What can they see? What can they hear? Where does the bath bomb go? Make a rain gauge Carefully cut the top off a two-litre plastic bottle. Turn the top upside-down and tape it to the lower half of the bottle. This inverted top acts as a funnel that will catch rain and collect it in the bottle below. Pour in enough water to cover the uneven surface of the bottom of the bottle. This creates an easy-to-see baseline, above which fresh rainfall can be measured. With a permanent marker, mark a line on the outside of the bottle, level with the surface of the water you just added. From there, use a ruler to make marks—one centimetre apart, up the side of the bottle. Put the bottle outside to await the rain and measure the rainfall! Top tip: this two-litre bottle rain gauge is roughly one-third the size of the gauges the Met Office use. Multiply your measurements by three, and see if they match up with the weather forecast! Oli Ryan is a former UK primary school teacher, now writing for PlanBee about issues affecting teachers, schools and pupils. PlanBee has loads of completely free resources for science teaching and learning for home and school. Visit PlanBee