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Education

Very basic science type experiements for a 5yo please

54 replies

HappyAsEyeAm · 24/02/2014 09:09

Can anyone recommend anything please? It has to be basic and preferably have instant results (rather than say leaving it on the windowsill for a fortnight). As much mixing and adding various things as possible Smile

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HappyAsEyeAm · 24/02/2014 09:10

experiments

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MrsTembe · 24/02/2014 09:12

Do you mean making rockets/volcano's type experiments ?

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Twattyzombiebollocks · 24/02/2014 09:12

Make a volcano is always a good one. Toilet roll inner taped to a plate. Bicarbonate of soda in the bottom, add vinegar mixed with red food colouring. Lava pours over the top very convincingly

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Greenandcabbagelooking · 24/02/2014 09:13

Make a mountain using flour. Put a canister of bicarbonate of soda in the middle. Mix some vinegar with red food dye. Add to bicarb and watch your volcano explode!

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Watto1 · 24/02/2014 09:13

DD was thrilled by cleaning a dirty penny with Brown sauce. Kept her out of mischief for a few minutes!

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HappyAsEyeAm · 24/02/2014 09:15

Fantastic, thanks - I had no idea that I could make experiements at home. I was up for buying some kind of kit, but they seem to be aimed at older children.

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LEMmingaround · 24/02/2014 09:16

Red cabbage is your friend. It is a ph ibdicator and it gives impressive results. They dont really need to know about acid and alkaline in any great detail at all. What you do is boil up some red cabbage. The water will turn dark purpley red.then you can add a few drops to solutions you find in the kitchen and there will be a colour chabge depending on if it is acid neutral or alkaline. All very quick and impressive results and no chemicals. Have a range of things to test like vibegar. Fizzy drinks. Toothpaste.

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Khimaira · 24/02/2014 09:17

White flowers in a vase of food colouring and water. Takes a day or so for the colour to come through. DS thought it was brilliant.

Baking a cake.

Blindfold taste test.

Glass of water, a spoonful of various liquids into each one and see which floats/sinks e.g cooking oil, milk, syrup, treacle

Boil red cabbage for 5 mins, strain off the water and pour some into two jars. Add vinegar to one and baking powder to the other. Use other things and see what happens e.g. yoghurt, milk, tea, soap, salt,lemon juice, toothpaste

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fuzzpig · 24/02/2014 09:18

Witches brew/volcano - vinegar and bicarb, you can put food dye in and I think washing up liquid to make it more bubbly. Can't remember exact details but google 'vinegar bicarb volcano' and you should get something

Mixing colours by using kitchen roll: line up three clear glasses. Put water and blue food dye in the first, and water and yellow due in the third. Roll up a sheet of kitchen paper and put one end in the blue glass and the other in the empty one. Do the same on the other side ie one end in the empty glass and one in the yellow. After a while the water will soak into the paper and end up in the middle glass, so you should get green water :)

Also you can dye white flowers by putting them in a glass of food-coloured water, the dye travels up the stem. You can even split the stem in half and put one half in each glass of different colours and the petals will be coloured half of each colour!

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Penguin0fMadagascar · 24/02/2014 09:19

There's a good one you can do with static electricity. Take a drinking straw and rub it a couple of times (in one direction only) with a synthetic fabric to give it a charge. Balance the straw on top of a bottle or something similar. Bring your finger near to one end of the straw and it should repel it enough to make the straw spin away slowly.

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LEMmingaround · 24/02/2014 09:19

Mix cornflour with water makes gloop that doesn't stick to anything

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fuzzpig · 24/02/2014 09:20

I've never heard of the cabbage thing, that sounds fab!

TBH I've heard most science 'kits' are a bit rubbish really, and there's so much you can do at home that you're not missing out by not buying :)

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BuggedByJake · 24/02/2014 09:20

Corn flour and water make interesting 'goo'.
Tie two pieces of string to one end of a metal slinky, put your fingers through the string & in your ears...listen to the amazing sound!
Put liquids of different densities in a jar, oil, water, honey etc. Drop objects in to the jar to see which level they drop to.
Make an egg gloat in salt water.
There are loads if you look online.

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BuggedByJake · 24/02/2014 09:22

Make an egg float

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LEMmingaround · 24/02/2014 09:23

If you leave an egg overnight in salt water it will double in size

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PsammeadPaintedTheLion · 24/02/2014 09:32

WILL it? In its shell and everything?

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LEMmingaround · 24/02/2014 09:56

no it wont Blush looks like you have to take the shell off www.science-sparks.com/2011/08/29/shrinking-eggs/ Still cool though, but much faff

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whogrewoutoftheterribletwos · 24/02/2014 10:02

Freeze a big block of water/salt water then put it into a sinkful of water and recreate the titanic with a paper boat (easy to fold - templates online)

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RufusTheReindeer · 24/02/2014 10:08

Very cheap large bottle of coke and a pack of mentos

Drop a mentos into the coke and it should fizz over like a mini volcano

Cubs and beavers do loads but I can't remember half of them

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LittleMachine · 24/02/2014 10:12

Make some coloured ice cubes and watch them melt in plain water. Especially good in a clear bowl like a fish tank.

Freeze some little toys like farm animals into a bowl of ice overnight. Explore how to get the toys out.

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MyNameIsKenAdams · 24/02/2014 10:12

Colour mixing - cup of red dyed water, cup of yellow dyed water, cup of plain water in between. Kitchen roll dipped into the red and clear and another one dipped into the clear and blue one. The coloured water will travel up the towel and mix into orange in the middle cup

Egg Suck - glass bottle, egg in shell resting on top of bottle. Drop a lit match in and replace egg, watch it get sucked whole into the bottle.

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MyNameIsKenAdams · 24/02/2014 10:13

Cornflower and water mixed. Turn a stereo speaker on its side and cover in cling film. Pour the mixture onto the actual grid speaker part and play musoc with a heavy base. Watch the mixture take on a sort of animal form.

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MmeLindor · 24/02/2014 10:19

This one is fab

Don't buy a kit - we've been given two of them and found them very limiting. There is loads you can do using stuff you've got around the house.

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Damnautocorrect · 24/02/2014 10:22

I've a science kit from letterbox, reviews weren't very good. But I've found it brilliant. It is basic stuff but the test tubes and beakers are very 5 yo friendly. It involves a lot of colours and things (not included) but it's a good starting point. It has lots of little cards with suggestions, yes if you have the time and inclination you can get and do it all without. My little one loves sitting picking out the experiment, rather than me 'today we are going to'

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SundaySimmons · 24/02/2014 10:27

Does an Orange Float or Sink?

Does an orange float or sink when placed in water? Seems like a fairly straight forward question, but is it? Give this fun density science experiment for kids a try and answer the question while learning a unique characteristic of oranges.

What you'll need:

An orange
A deep bowl or container
Water


Instructions:

Fill the bowl with water.
Put the orange in the water and watch what happens.
Peel the rind from the orange and try the experiment again, what happens this time?


What's happening?

The first time you put the orange in the bowl of water it probably floated on the surface, after you removed the rind however, it probably sunk to the bottom, why?

The rind of an orange is full of tiny air pockets which help give it a lower density than water, making it float to the surface. Removing the rind (and all the air pockets) from the orange increases its density higher than that of water, making it sink.

Density is the mass of an object relative to its volume. Objects with a lot of matter in a certain volume have a high density, while objects with a small amount of matter in the same volume have a low density.

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