Science has turned out to be our favorite subject to study at home together. My kids love science and no wonder! It’s all experimental and hands on. As far as I’m aware, the new nation wide Common Core standards have taken science and history almost entirely out of early elementary school classrooms. It’s such a shame because those are the two most interesting and potentially fun subjects.
But no problem, we’re doing it at home and you can to without any science know-how or prep work of your own. All you need is this kit – My First Mind Blowing Science made by Scientific Explorer. It’s inexpensive and contains 11 awesome hands-on experiments that your kids will love.
The set comes with everything you need to do all the experiments:
- Step-by-step instructions for all 11 experiments including the secrets to answer questions about what’s happening in each experiment.
- Red cabbage juice powder
- Citric acid
- Baking Soda
- 3 color tables
- Crosslinked polyacrylamide (so fancy!)
- vegetable oil
- corn starch
- 2 cotton swabs
- 3 test tubes
- 3 plastic cups
- pipette
- 2 sticks
- 2 measuring scoops
- activity guide
Whew! It comes with a lot of stuff.
It’s geared for kids ages 4 and up which is awesome. The little ones love science too! My littlest loved being able to help and observe with big brothers.
This was the color changing experiment – can you see how excited Gus is??? He LOVES surprises.
The kit had their attention the whole time. They were so eager to do each experiment, see what was going to happen, and learn why.
We’re doing Activity 2 here, the Color Changing Liquids experiment. We used baking soda, citric acid, and red cabbage powder to learn about acids and bases and what happens to a natural dye depending on how acidic or basic the solution is. Cooler colors are more basic, warmer colors are more acidic.
And then we did some color mixing of our own, just to see what would happen. That’s the great thing about science – make a guess and see what actually happens!
They are so impressed by all the cool science happening in front of them. It’s like magic!!
Another favorite was the colorful jiggly crystals activity. We added baking soda to one cup and citric acid to the second cup, added the red cabbage powder to both and then some polyacrylamide crystals. We had to wait a few hours to see what happened and when we looked after the time was up…we were amazed!
The crystals (on the right in the pictures above) absorbed all the liquid, plumped up and became jiggly and weird. What fun! We had a good time poking and squishing and squashing the newly jiggly crystals.
We have LOVED this kit – for $15 you get 11 awesome experiments with all the stuff you need to make them happen. Gathering all the supplies is always the hardest part for me – this kit made it so easy. Everything was in the box and ready to go.
Scientific Explorer has dozens of kits just like this for all ages. It would be a super fun activity for a family activity or birthday party and would make an awesome gift. We have our eyes on many other kits that we plan to use as a hands-on supplement to our learn-at-home lifestyle.
Keep up with Alex Toys and Scientific Explorer on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram. What are your favorite science activities to do as a family???
