Children are innately curious minds. Their eye to look at the world is fresh new and wonderous. As a teacher, we need to get a hook on those curiosities. Whether you are a preschool teacher, kindergarten, or Nursery teacher, hands-on experiments are the best way to teach science to young learners. With kids, teachers are always finding ways to create activities that are fun and engaging.
Well, the good news is, science is actually fun! All we need to do is make a precise decision on what we want our kids to learn and choose to practice it through real-time learning experiments.
5 science activities that are fun, easy, and invokes questions in children’s minds –
Make Science cool with Dancing Raisins
Will they float or sink? Kids enjoy experiments that are instantaneous. Dancing raisins is one of such, it is fun and feels like magic. You only need few raisins, a glass with any soda that is clear to look at. Before dropping the raisins just make sure they are well separated, otherwise, they won’t dance. Once dropped, the carbonated soda will release carbon dioxide bubbles. Those bubbles are going to get attached to the raisins and make them float. This happens because of the increase in buoyancy. It will keep happening till the carbon dioxide is released into the air.
Teach How Sound travels
Another cool science activity for kids! This too is a simple, quite easy, and fun experiment to try with young learners. You need 3 things – a ruler, some strings and a spoon. Now tie a knot around the spoon by leaving the two ends of the strings on each side. Next warp each end of the knot around the pointer fingers of a kid, now ask the kid to hold his/her finger into the ears. Let the spoon hang below the waist. And now hit the ruler gently against the spoon.
So when the ruler hits the spoon it makes a vibrational noise, thus creates sound waves. It travels through the air into the ears.
Plants are Living Beings
Plants drink water too! This experiment is going to a wide eye opener for kids. It is simple, hassle free and can be done with just 3 simplest ingredients. All you need is a cup of water, some leaves, and some red food color. Try using a bigger leaf as we want to see the water travel through its vein. Just put the stem of the leaf on the colored water. And see how the magic happens. Within few moments, the water is going to travel through the vein of the leaf. You can use a magnifying glass to help kids see more clearly.
Rainbow Jar for Density
The element of color adds so much excitement to science activites. This experiment is totally kids friendly and only requires few household items. You need a clear see through jar, honey, dish soap (blue or green colored), light corn syrup, olive oil, rubbing alcohol, food coloring, a dropper, and water. And now the pouring is a bit tricky. You want to make sure you do the steps right. For starter, you can explain how different liquid has different density and begin with the hands-on.
Pour in the honey, only in the middle of the jar and not in the sides. Next pour in the corn syrup (make it purple with the food color), then add the dish soap. If your dish soap is blue then on the next step add the watercolored green. Next, you are going to add olive oil. And for the last step, it's time for the rubbing alcohol. Add the color red to it. don't just drop it. Use the dropper. This time you pour it on the side of the container. Why do you need to do this? Is because we don’t want the layer of the oil to break out!
Introduce Change of Matter with Ice Cream
Oh, the love for ice cream! Even we adults seem to get melted, how can kids not. With few simple ingredients and steps, you can now help children understand how liquid changes its forms into a different state. You need ice cubes, sugar, milk, flavor (vanilla, chocolate any of your choice) rock salt, Ziploc bags (one bigger and another small-sized). Keep in mind to take measured proportion sugar, milk, etc. for the right taste.
Add the ice and rock salt in the big Ziploc bag seal the bag and keep it aside. Put milk, ice cream flavor, and sugar into the small Ziploc. Now seal the bag and place it in the bigger one and seal the larger bag carefully. And then keep shaking the bag until the mixture becomes ice cream (this could take around five minutes). And finally, wipe off the small bag, open it, and enjoy! Children are surely going to love the process. It is safe, fun, and tasty too.
Early age is a fine stage to spark curiosity. For Nursery teacher, it is essential to tap into the critical thinking and reasoning skills of children, as that is what we adults are striving to invoke within them. Teachers can prepare themselves with knowledge and information. But the key to design a meaningful learning program lies in knowing to use the right technique.
This is where the role of professionally trained and certified nursery teachers comes, to ensure he/she is well equipped with hands-on activities that are age appropriate and goal oriented.
Watching kids discover on their own is so much fulfilling. Not to mention that is the true job of a teacher. Bring your heart and mind into planning the lesson, so that children can find ways to love the journey of learning.
Written By : Shivangi Chandekar
