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!

Review: Wild! Science Lava Lamp and Glitter Tube Lab and Wild! Science Competition

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When my 13 year old spotted the box of the Lava Lamp Kit it vanished very rapidly up to her bedroom! She has had a lava lamp in the past and was excited to have another one. So I left her to it to make it on her own and she took photographs as she went.... All she needed was to get some vegetable oil as everything else was included. The instructions were really well laid out and she didn't ask for any help at all:

All the equipment she needed was included and she just had to follow the simple instructions to create her home science project:

Once she had prepared all her mixture then she just had to assemble the lamp which has a push light in the bottom:

Review: Science Maxi Ravensburger Prehistoric Expedition

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We were very excited to be sent a Ravensburger Science X Maxi Prehistoric Expedition set to review at half term:

Perfect for budding scientists! There is a fascinating booklet included in the kit with all 15 activities listed in it, each of which take you further through time:

1. create a time line from the cut out photos in the book
2. make a trilobite model out of plaster cast
3. make a nautilus model from plaster cast
4. make an Ichthyostega model in plaster
5. examine an ammonite with a magnifying glass
6. construct a giant dragonfly
7. make an Ichthyosaurus model in plaster
8. excavate a fossil
9. make an Archaeopteryx plaster model
10. construct a T. Rex in cardboard
11. hatch triops
12. look after triops
13. light experiments with triops
14. feeding experiments with triops
15. harvest triops eggs and start again!

Typically my kids never bothered with the book they just grabbed the items that intrigued them the most. The first thing my son went for was the fossil excavation:

When he finished we had a mini dinosaur:

Next up my daughter chose to do the Tyrannosaurus Rex model. This is made of thick card and she easily managed to pop out the pieces and construct them by herself:

It makes a pretty scary and realistic fossil model:

She had a brief attempt at the dragonfly on her own but said it was too hard. We haven't had a chance to try either making plaster cast models or grow triops yet as they need more time and space than we have had recently! At least I know we have something to do on a wet weekend in the future and the triops will need to wait for the summer and some warmth as our house is too cool at the moment...

I have to say that even though £29.99 RRP seems quite pricey there are hours if not days of activities in the kit. We still have plenty more to be getting on with and I'm looking forward to making the models. Just hope I finally succeed in growing triops as we have failed in the past - the instructions in this set look so much better than in previous ones though.

If you have fans of prehistory in the house and they are 8+ then this would be a great present. Some of it will require grown up help and plenty of newspaper to prevent mess!

Monday Book Review: Discover the Extreme World

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We were sent this book for my 8 year old to review. She is a science nut and history buff so this was right up her street. The back cover says:

Our awesome planet as you've never seen it before

Feed your imagination with this unique insight into the world of extremes. Dedicated to exploring only the explosive, extraordinary, and incredible, these adrenaline-packed pages reveal everything from speed machines and storm chasers to ferocious predators.

The book has been put together by the Discovery Channel and has 6 sections:

• Active Earth
• Awesome Animals
• Incredible Science
• Ultimate Machines
• Super Humans
• History Revealed

When I handed the book to my daughter on the way home from school she immediately dived into a random page and started reading me facts about alphabets around the world. I was then regaled with the timeline of the history of the universe!

Each double page is dedicated to one theme with a bite size paragraph on each sub topic and plenty of illustrations. These manage to engage a child's attention for enough time for them to learn some fascinating facts. This is one of my daughter's favourite pages:

The other thing designed to appeal to its target audience is the gruesome details on some sections! To get my daughter to hand the book back to me to write this review took some coercion as she wants to keep it on her bed. As an adult I actually enjoy reading bits to my daughter and I'm being distracted by dipping into it now as I type.. The only negative thing I have to say is that the book is American and so therefore uses imperial measurements first (metric in brackets) which my daughter needed to have explained. It also uses American English which caused some confusion to her. 

The book has an RRP of £17.99 but I have found it on Amazon for only £9.17. It would make a great Christmas present for a child 8+ or indeed a great addition to the coffee table for adults to peruse.

Bang Goes the Theory Roadshow

The kids and I were very lucky and got tickets in the draw for the Bang Goes the Theory roadshow in Manchester today. My daughter and I are big fans of this science show so there was much excitement on nearing the venue:

There was quite a wait before the doors opened but once in there was so much hands on activity for children and adults:

The above selection included:

• painting with maggots
• using microscopes to look at water samples
• sniffing good and bad smells
• blowing bubbles into a box which contained dry ice
• using a green screen to forecast the weather
• balancing a beach ball on a jet of air

During the 3 hour session there were 3 stage demonstrations from the usual presenters: Dallas Campbell, Jem Stansfield and Liz Bowen:

Basically they recreated a few of the experiments they do on the series. There were a lot of bangs in the final session which went down well with all ages in the audience! Of course there was also a degree of audience participation and predictably my daughter managed to get herself chosen to test out Jem's pear drop glue:

She was presented with the 2 blocks still stuck together and autographed by a couple of the presenters!

Altogether a fantastic family fun and educational day out. We all had different favourite bits. My daughter was chuffed to have held the hand of presenter Liz on the way to taking part. My 4 year old wanted to go home and make explosions Mummy! As for me watching my children getting excited by science was just amazing.