Five-Star Program for Pre-Kindergarten, Preschool, Toddler and Infant Education located in Greenville, NC.

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Easy Home Science Experiments for Preschoolers

Letting your child experiment with science is not only fun, it’s an excellent learning opportunity. With just a handful of items you have in your pantry and refrigerator, you can create fantastic science experiments for preschoolers that allow them to test ideas and get real-world understanding of some challenging concepts. To help you get started, our child care center in Greenville, NC is sharing some easy but educational home science experiments to get you started.  

child care center greenville, nc

Turning Grapes into Raisins

First up on the list is an exciting treat your child can eat, and for caregivers, it requires very little effort, though it does take a bit of patience for your child. Turning raisins into grapes using just sunshine will show your child how water evaporates from within the grapes, increasing the sugar content and making them sweeter. After the grapes are raisins, see if your child notices any difference, like changes in color, size or weight. 

What You’ll Need:

  • Grapes (Red or green are fine)
  • Baking sheet
  • Kitchen towel
  • Three days of sunshine (check the weather forecast!)
  • Patience

Instructions for Turning Grapes into Raisins

  • Pick out some fresh grapes, wash them, and gently pat them dry.
  • Spread the grapes out on the tray, making sure none of them are touching and cover them with the kitchen towel.
  • Set the grapes outside in an area of direct sunshine for three days (bring them in at night to keep them dry – wet grapes can rot, dry grapes will become raisins!) pour contents into a clean bowl.
  • Check their progress after three days – in hot, sunny weather, you should have raisins!

Homemade Slime

Making slime is a terrific and fun way to begin teaching your preschooler about solid and liquid states of matter while offering some great sensory play. Slime requires children’s glue, which has the active ingredient polyvinyl acetate, a liquid polymer that has the qualities of both a solid and a liquid. The borax links the polyvinyl acetate molecules to each other, so when they’re combined it creates the one large, flexible polymer or slime. This fun, gooey creation is easy to make and doubles as a toy for your preschooler.

What You’ll Need:

  • Water
  • White school glue
  • Food coloring (optional)
  • Borax
  • Bowl
  • Plastic bag

Instructions on Making Homemade Slime

  • In one bowl, mix together ¼ cup of water and ¼ bottle of white school glue (1 oz.). If you want to add color to the slime, just add a few drops of your child’s favorite color into the water mix.
  • After mixing, add ¼ cup of Borax to the water and glue until the Borax is dissolved.
  • Mix and stir the concoction and take note of the slime beginning to form. Once the mix has become too hard to stir, knead it with your hands until it feels less sticky.
    After kneading the slime, you and your child are free to play with it.  Keep the concoction in the fridge in a plastic bag and continue using the fun slime for a few more days.

Color Changing Milk

Color changing milk teaches about surface tension, color mixing, and is also simply a blast to watch. Milk is made mostly of water, however, it also contains proteins and vitamins, as well as tiny droplets of fat. The fats and proteins in milk are especially sensitive to change, thus when you hold a soapy Q-tip to the center the molecules are altered. This makes for a cool color explosion experiment you can watch right in your kitchen.

preschooler science experiementWhat You’ll Need:

  • Shallow pan or bowl
  • Whole milk
  • Food coloring
  • Q-tips
  • Liquid dish soap

Instructions for Making Color Changing Milk:

  • Pour milk into your shallow pan or bowl and allow it to settle
  • Add one drop of color from each of the four food colorings into the milk. Place each drop close to the center of the milk.
  • Take a clean Q-tip and touch the tip of the cotton swab to the center of the milk. Be sure not to stir or mix the swab and the milk, just gently touch the swab to it.
  • Put a drop of soap on the tip of the Q-tip now, and repeat process above with one exception – hold the swab in place for 10-15 seconds.
  • Now watch with your child as mini-explosions of color occur in the bowl.

Tornado in a Bottle

Last but not least is the tornado in a bottle science experiment. This super simple, hands-on project is a great way to introduce weather and safety precautions to your preschooler. The motion of spinning the concoction of water and soap in a plastic bottle creates a water vortex that is visually similar to a tornado. Try this intriguing experiment out today to develop your child’s imagination and creativity.

What You’ll need:

  • Water
  • Dish Soap
  • Tall narrow plastic bottle

Instructions on Making a Tornado in a Bottle:

  • Fill bottle with water
  • Add a tiny squirt of dish soap into the bottle
  • Secure the lid of the bottle
  • Shake the concoction

Take a Tour of Our Greenwood, NC Child Care Center

Preschoolers learn through hands-on activities that foster their creativity. At Children’s Campus of Greenville, we value the importance of having safe, educational, and fun child development activities – every day. Learn more about how we teach science and other skills in our curriculum by scheduling a tour at 252-756-8200 or filling out the form below to learn more.

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