Simple Science with kitchen ingredients

One of the great things about being a primary school teacher is the fun you can have with science! My son loves the fact that I try out things at home with him too. For this week's lesson we were looking at seeing if we could prove things were alive.

Celery Drinking

For this one you need:

• a fresh stalk of celery
• food colouring
• water
• glasses/cups

Put a few drops of food colouring into the water and put in the celery, I did try chrysanthemums but they didn't work!

After a few hours you peel the edge off the celery to see how far the food dye has gone:

I replicated the experiment with a class of 4-6 year olds and they could see the colouring had moved up:

Yeast Breathing

For this experiment you need:

• yeast
• sugar
• warm water
• a bottle
• a balloon

Put a spoonful of yeast with a spoon of sugar in a bottle. Add some warm water (not too hot or it will kill the yeast!) and shake it up. Then out a balloon over the top to seal it:

When you leave it warm water the balloon will gradually inflate as the yeast lets off carbon dioxide as it breathes: 

The children were amazed by this simple experiment!