Tag Archives: STEM

Milk and Germ Science Experiment

It’s Friday, what better way to end the week with a science experiment. Well, it is British Science Week!

Today in the Discovery Room, in our technology area, we have decided to do a milk food colouring experiment on the light table. For this experiment  we gathered everything we needed-a bowl, milk, food colouring, fairy liquid and some cotton swabs.

We poured enough milk in a bowl to cover the surface with the depth of about a 1/4 inch. We then added a few drops of different food colouring in the centre of the bowl of milk quite close to each other.

Next for the fun bit ! We dipped the cotton swabs in a small amount of fairy liquid and then dipped it in the colours one at a time for around 10/15 seconds.
We were careful to move each swap onto one colour at a time, without disturbing the milk.
We were amazed to see how the colours swirled and changed in the milk especially when we placed the cotton swab on to the different colours .


Wow look at the burst of colours!

“ It’s like fireworks ”  “ It’s moving “

”It turned into a new colour” “ It has waves in it”

”The milk has changed colour “   “It looks like dynamite”

We developed our science skills by investigating the effects of adding substance together which cause a reaction.

Because we had so much fun, we decided to do a Germ Experiment.
We added a good coating of glitter into a bowl of water (if you don’t have glitter you can use pepper instead ). Whilst we did this, we discussed how the glitter represented the germs. We then dipped our fingertips into the water and watched how the glitter stuck to our finger, this showed us how germs stick to our hands if we don’t wash them with soap. The children then dipped their clean finger into soapy water before dipping it back into the bowl. The children were amazed to see how the glitter/germs spread  across the water avoiding their soapy finger.

“ Germs stuck to our finger”  “Germs don’t like soap”

We concluded that if we use soap to wash our hands, we can avoid germs. This experiment also developed our well-being skill by learning how to keep clean and healthy.

It was fun and enjoyable to create these  memorable science experiences for the children, so why not continue British science week at home over the weekend and perhaps send us some photographs of you budding scientists!

Frozen gardens

It’s science week at Cart Mill and we have been discussing the properties of water and the effect of the cold. We found out during our visit from Williamwood that water is a liquid and that it can move about in a container.

We gathered some containers and used scissors to cut up some foliage to add before we poured the water in, then off to the freezer we went.

The next day we were surprised by the appearance of the water “it’s gone hard” “it’s cold” The water had changed from a liquid – something that can move about in the container, to a solid – something that doesn’t move in the container. When the temperature of the water becomes very cold (below freezing) it turns to ice.

The children decided to add colour to the water, so, very carefully we used droppers to add some dye “it’s getting  darker”

 

The children wondered what would happen if we added more water to our ice. We added another layer of foliage and coloured water on top of our ice. The water sat like a different layer on top of the ice, it was very strange, the water moved but the ice didn’t! We all wondered what would happen if we put the container back in the freezer so off to the kitchen we went with our containers. What will happen? Watch this space…

Water Xylophone

This week is Science Week and we will be exploring science themed experiences throughout all the different areas in each of the playrooms.

Today in our music area we made a water xylophone using some glass jars and food colouring.

We were developing our fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as we used a pipette to pour the food colouring in to the jar after which, we added some water.

Once the children had added the water, they lined up all the jars and noticed that each jar had a different volume of water.

”that one is filled right to the top”

”the red one has just a little bit”

We used a beater on the jars to listen to the sounds it made.

”The blue one sounds really low and the red one sounds really high”

I asked if the children knew what made the sounds but they were unsure.

After searching the internet we learned that when we use the beater to tap the jar it causes sound waves which are vibrations that travel through the water to make the sound. When there is less water the pitch is higher.

We listened to the different pitches as we played our own music, we are going to collect some more jars to add lots of different sounds.