Earth Day Activities -Recycled Planter on a String

March 31, 2016 By Deirdre

This activity combines the desire to plant and grow in the spring with the need to find ways to recycle items from our recycling bin. It was inspired by the book The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle: A Story About Recycling . We don’t have a lot of plastic water bottles at our house. We need to use reusable water bottles for the most part. Every now and then we have some. My husband bought a set off bottle water. My son and I used the plastic rings that came with the set and one of the bottles to make a planter and a sling. I thought you might like to make these some of the Earth Day activities you do with your kids.

Let me walk you through how we completed our Earth Day Activities. First we made the sling and then we planted in the planter.

Making the sling:

Four connected rings were cut out for the full set of plastic rings.

A long piece of plastic twine was thread through one set of the ring. Then it was pulled up to make sure each side of the twine was the same length.
The bottle filled with soil was place in the center of the set of rings. The soil was used to help the bottle stay in place while we constructed the plant sling
The two ends were wrapped around the mouth of the plastic bottle and a knot was placed in the twine near the mouth of the bottle. The remaining twine was left long and loose to be used later.
The same steps were followed with the two remaining rings.
Then the ends of twine were tied together to create a way to hang the sling from a window lock.

Planting a Seed

We planted flowers seeds that have not come up yet. One seed at a time was dropped down the mouth of the water bottle. A chopstick was used to slide the seeds over and push them into the soil.

We initially placed a ¼ cup of water into the bottle to dampen the ground and then screwed on the bottle’s cap. Now we add a few drops of water every now and them just to keep the soil moist.

You will find more Earth Day activities and gardening experiments like this on my Early Learning Science board and my on Gardening Pinterest. Please take moment to check them out.

This post is part of storybook science series hosted by Inspiration Laboratories. Each day in the month of March a different children’s book will be tied to science project. I hope you will check them all out.

STEM Science Activity- The Moon, Willoughby, and The Moon Buggy

March 19, 2016 By Deirdre

This post contains affiliate links.

We recently read a whole bunch of storybooks about the moon. I asked JDaniel to pick his favorite. Willoughby and the Moon was the one he said was the very best one. I try to share you books he has loved so today I am sharing Willoughby and the Moon and a fun STEM science activity for kids that is based on the book.

Let me start by telling you about the book. Willoughby is a little boy who loves to watch the stages of the moon from his bedroom window. He is also afraid of the dark. One night instead of finding it in the sky he finds it in his bedroom closet. This begins an out of this world adventure with a giant silver snail that is afraid of tons of things. Willoughby travels with the snail to find his special toy ball on the moon. He ends up playing ball with a lot of giant silver snails. The illustrations in this book are amazing. I think they are one of the reason JDaniel loved this book.

STEM Science Activity- Moon Buggy Travel

Willoughby travels on the moon in a moon buggy. The buggy leaves tire treads on the moon’s surface. The bottom of one of our egg cartons looked a little like moon buggy tread marks.

We tried placing different types of objects in the egg carton to see if they would make deeper tire treads on our pretend moon surface. The moon’s surface was represented by flour placed in an aluminum baking pan. We used glass pebbles, rocks, and rice in the egg carton as the weights.
Each experiment followed the same procedure. We filled each of the carton’s egg cups with the same object. Then the egg carton was placed in the pan filled with flour. The egg carton was pressed into the flour with some force. We didn’t use a lot of force. Too much force would have caused the egg carton to crack. Finally we used a ruler to measure the depth of the deepest mark in the flour.

While we found slightly different measurements, none of the objects in the egg carton made a really deep dent. We concluded that having the weight of the objects spread out probably made a difference.

We will have to try more weight displacement activities before making a final conclusion.

You will find more science experiments like this experiment on my Early Learning Science board on Pinterest. Please take moment to check them out.

Science Experiments with Egg Parachutes

March 14, 2016 By Deirdre

Over Christmas vacation, my family visited the children’s museum in Columbia, South Carolina. One of our favorite areas featured science experiments with plastic eggs. Kids were encouraged to create eggs with parachutes that would float up in air tubes or tunnels and out the opening in the top. Recently we did some STEM science experiments with egg parachutes at home.

We don’t happen to have air tunnels at our house. Once we had created a variety of egg parachutes, we took them outside and tossed each of them in the air. Some of the parachutes were attached to a plastic egg with wooden objects and some with different types of straws. Some had short side attachments and the others were long. The goal was to make each one float back to the ground with its parachute catching air. We didn’t want the egg just to fall back to earth and crash. We didn’t know if the length of the item attached to the egg and parachute would make a difference. That was something we explored.

Here are the supplies for the science experiments:

Plastic egg halves
Large plastic straws
Narrow bendy straws
Popsicle sticks
Wooden ice cream spoons
Wood chopsticks
Coffee filters
Masking tape

Putting the Egg Parachutes Together

After deciding which connectors to use, we started building. The two matching connectors were taped inside each of the plastic egg halves. We added tape that crossed from the inside of the egg to the outside around each connector to make sure it stayed in place. Then a ring of the tape was added to the outside of each of the eggs to hold the outside edges of the crisscrosses in place.

Then we taped the connectors to the outside of a coffee filter. To add another variable we could have taped connector to the inside of the coffee filter. We have to try more science experiments using that idea on another day.

Conducting Science Experiments

We used underhand throw to toss each of the egg parachutes into the air. JDaniel added a big swing to his toss. The parachute with large straws caught a lot of air.

It had a unique sideways descent. That made it easy to chase down and catch.

The egg parachute with the popsicle traveled high in the air when I threw it. JDaniel actually took this picture of the egg parachute descending.

I think your children will have fun conducting science experiments with plastic Easter eggs. After they have attended an egg hunt, you will have plenty of eggs to conduct experiments with.

Here are some other fun ways to use plastic eggs in learning:

Plastic Egg Greenhouse

Building Background

Here are some wonderful books about parachutes.
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Parts of a Plant We Eat Activity

March 10, 2016 By Deirdre

Children are always surprised to find out that vegetables come from so many different parts of a plant. They may be the stem, the roots, or the leaves of a plant. Some of the vegetables we eat are actually the seeds of the plant. While some of the foods we call vegetables aren’t vegetables at all, the are really the fruit of the plant.

Last year I made a gardening board and some vegetables for an activity on the amazing blog Totschooling called Where do Vegetables Grow? It looked at where vegetables grow and focused on the positional words above and below. Well, I still have all of its components and thought it would be fun to find a new way to use them. This activity looks at just want part of the plant each food is and whether it is really a fruit. Let me share with you each of the foods focused on in the activity and where it grows.

Peas- Seeds
Asparagus- Stem
Cucumber- Fruit
Bean- Seeds
Corn- Seeds
Tomato- Fruit
Onion- Root
Radish-Root
Carrot- Root

I bet you weren’t surprised by the tomato, but did the cucumber surprise you. There are probably a number of you that haven’t really thought about whether either of these are fruit or not. They are fruit due to the fact that they house the seeds of a plant.

How We Explored Parts of a Plant

I created a soil, ground, sky board by attaching burlap to a piece of cardboard. We used that as our work space. We started by sorting the felt vegetables I made by where they grew. (Just like the above and below lesson.) Then we talked about plant parts they looked like. That lead to a discussion of whether it looked like what we thought a root or stem or seed or fruit looked like. It was important to make connection between what was already known or understood and the new information that was being shared.

You may be thinking that you like this activity, but you don’t have time to create a set of felt vegetables. Well, you don’t have to! I am making the set of printable vegetable learning cards I made for Totschooling available to you. They are labeled pictures of the felt vegetable I made.

You will find more science experiments like this simple pendulum experiment on my Early Learning Science board on Pinterest. Please take moment to check them out.

STEM Gardening- Paper Plate Greenhouse

March 7, 2016 By Deirdre

Each spring JDaniel and I plant bean seeds. Last year we planted seeds in a plastic Easter egg. A few years ago we planted a seeds in an indoor paper plate garden. We are repeating the paper plate garden or greenhouse project. This year it is going to be a STEM project. We are going to keep track on the temperature of the room we are hanging the plant in and amount of water the plant is being given. JDaniel is going to be given the opportunity to come up with a few other variables he would to explore. The ultimate goal is to have the seeds in the greenhouse grow into healthy bean plants.

Let me walk you through how to make the paper plate greenhouse:

Cut a house shape out of two paper plates. One plate will be the front of your house and one will be the back. Cut a square of the same size out of both of the paper plates.

Decorate the plate that will be on the front of the paper plate greenhouse. While you could use a color motif, free drawing or doodle would be fine too.

Then it is time to assemble the paper plate greenhouse. It is kind of like putting together a sandwich. You have a plastic zipper bag between the two paper plates. The bag is stapled to the plates at the top right above the zipper. The two plates are give two extra staples at the bottom below the bag.

We had to tuck our bag up a little to keep it above the staples. I didn’t want to have holes in the bag. Keeping it holes free kept it a closed environment.

Two bean seeds are then placed inside a folded damp paper towel. We used two seeds just encase one of them doesn’t sprout. This year we are trying to grow organic beans. You can try growing any type of bean or plant you like!

Finally the paper plate greenhouse needs to be hung in a sunny spot. We have ours in the door near the kitchen table. It gets a lot of sun. It is also a place that we can see if the paper towel has dried it. If it does, we can unzip the bag a little dampness to the bag.

You will find more science experiments like this simple pendulum experiment on my Early Learning Science board on Pinterest. Please take moment to check them out.

Building Background

If your children don’t know a lot about gardening , you may want to read a book or do an activity that features them before you start these pages.

The links below are affiliate links.

This fun STEAM building kit invites children to create and build a garden of spring flowers.

Oh, Say Can You Seed?: All About Flowering Plants is a wonderful Cat in the Hat book that teaches children about the parts of plants and how they grow.

What fun it would be to plant a planter and then grow flowers in it!

The Garden Classroom: Hands-On Activities in Math, Science, Literacy, and Art does a wonderful job of tying learning into growing.

More Gardening Projects

It will be fun to see what color of clear plastic egg will have its seed germinate first. We really enjoyed this STEM experiment at my house.

Seed Germination- Will the Color of the Egg Effect Seed Growth? -Seeds in Soil

Growing seeds without soil or hydroponic gardening will be fascinating for your children to see.

Hydroponic Gardening with Kids - Bean Space Garden : Kids will love watching the bean seed grow without soil and floating in space and growing!

Zombie Goldfish Optical Illusion Experiment

March 3, 2016 By Deirdre

This post contains affiliate links. I was sent the books mentioned in the post to review.

JDaniel and I recently spent time trying to decide the best way to get our zombie goldfish optical illusion spinning. The experiment featured the main character from the children picture book called My Big Fat Zombie Goldfishand the children’s novel The SeaQuel: My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish We were sent both books to review. I will tell you more about them later.) We both agreed that one of each of the two string needed to be held in each hand. Beyond that, we have very different opinions about how to spin the zombie goldfish. We also had different opinions about which way to work best at the beginning. Let me walk you through our spinning attempts and their results.

Getting the Optical Illusion Ready

Creating the Fish

I drew a zombie goldfish is Microsoft Paint. ( A very tame version of the goldfish. The fish in the books is much cooler and a little scary.) The goldfish was placed inside a circle. To make the optical illusion work one circled goldfish was created facing the left edge. Then the fish was flipped to create a second goldfish facing upside down and to right. (If you create your own optical illusion design you will want to do the same thing.

Getting the Fish Getting to Spin

The fish were facing on the outside of each circle. One fish was right side up and one was upside down. I was very careful about making sure their tails were lined up prior to gluing the circles together.

A hole punch was used to place a hole by the fish’s mouth and one by the fish’s tail. I really tried to make them right across from each other.
Then a string about 12 inches long was attached to each hole. The string was used as our spinning mechanism.

Two Spinning Techniques

I have read about twisting each of the strings as tightly as possible with my fingers. Then I was to let the strings go. We tried this and the fish did spin and create the optical illusion. While my technique worked, it was declared a slow way to create an optical illusion.

The faster way to get the fish to spin was to swing the two string and the zombie goldfish in big arcing circles. After a few swings, I was to pull the strings out as far as possible. (Don’t pull too hard I was warned or you will pull the string off the zombie goldfish.)

After trying both techniques were tried several times, I conceded that the arcing swings really did create the best optical illusion. We both had to admit that using this technique caused us to have to retie the strings a lot. We must not have tied the string enough times

Book Reviews

The Fintastic Fishsitter: A Big Fat Zombie Goldfish Adventure (My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish) is a picture book about babysitting a zombie goldfish. Sami is asked brother’s best friend’s zombie goldfish. She finds the hardest thing is keeping her brother’s vampire cat away from him. Finally, she decides to teach them why it will be better to get along. JDaniel and I both loved this book. It has a fun ending.

ANY FIN IS POSSIBLE: MY BIG FAT Z (My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish) was JDaniel’s favorite of the two books. It contains two separate stories. One about a mummy cat and one competing in a sports day. Both stories were a lot of fun! They would have to been if they featured a zombie goldfish. We both of humor found in stories. Some made parts made a smile and others made us laugh out loud.

This post is part of the storybook science series hosted by Inspiration Laboratories. Each day in the month of March a different children’s book will be tied to a science project. I hope you will check them all out.

STEM States of Matter Sensory Bottles

February 24, 2016 By Deirdre

JDaniel has been studying the three states of matter at school. I thought it would be fun to create a STEM science activity that would help him to visual the three states of matter.

This activity uses only two objects. A bunch of Augshy 120 Pcs 1 Inch/25 mm Christmas Silver Jingle Bellsand small water bottles. (You could use large water bottles, but you would need to use a lot more jingle bells.)

The bells represented molecules. The bottles represented a way to contain the matter.

States of Matter Sensory Bottle Construction

We started by talking about how easily each state of matter can move around. We decide that gases can move very easily. The gas bottle would need just a few a few jingle bells dropped into it. When the bottle was shaken those few bells could easily move around in the bottle.

It was decided that the liquid bottle need more bells than the gas bottle, but not as many as the solid bottle was going to. When that bottle was shaken, we could see the bells move. They didn’t move as easily around the bottle as the gas bottle’s bells could.

The bottle of bell representing a solid was filled with all the remaining jingle bells. We even transferred some of the bells from the liquid bottle to the solid. The bells in the solid bottle barely moved when the bottle was shaken.

We then talked about why a solid keeps its shape and a gas doesn’t. It was easy to see that the gas molecules moved easily around the container. There weren’t a lot of other molecules around them to help them keep their form.

The liquid bells has other bells that prevented them from moving freely. They could move, but not everywhere they tried to go.

The bells in the solid had very little movement. They were able to move slightly.

I think it was helpful to visual matter with our bell bottles. It probably also tapped into my son’s auditory and tactile learning. I bet it will do the same thing for your children.

You will find more science experiments like this simple pendulum experiment on my Early Learning Science board on Pinterest. Please take moment to check them out.

Coding Activity- We’re Going on a Bear Hunt Algorithm

February 21, 2016 By Deirdre

Learning to code isn’t something that you have to wait for your children to get older to do. I have been working on coding with my kindergarten and first-grade students. We started by exploring what an algorithm is. They were told an algorithm is the series of steps needed to complete a task. There have been several activities we have used to learn about algorithms. I shared the walking and building an algorithm coding activity with you last week. This week I want to share with you the Going on a Bear Hunt algorithm coding lesson we did just a short time ago.

Coding Activity

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We started by reading the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. The kids loved the rhythm and repetition found in this book. Many had learned hand signs to going with each area the family encountered in the book. After coming to a consensus as to which hand signs we would use, I reread the book while they make the signs.

After we had read the book twice, I passed out a We’re Going on a Bear Hunt that I had made. We talked about how we were going to create an algorithm on the grid that followed the events of the story.

We started at the house of the family in the book. Then I asked a student to share with me if we needed to go up, down, left or right to get to the field. When we had decided that we needed to go up, we talked about how many squares we needed to go up. They drew an arrow in the square between the house and the field.

From the field box we talked about the direction we needed to go to get to the stream. After deciding to go up, they drew arrows in the squares between the field and the stream. We continue creating an algorithm that would ultimately lead us all the way to the bear.

As you probably noticed in the pictures above, JDaniel worked on this activity at home with me too. He does a great job of letting me know if an activity works and if it is fun before I try it with my students at school.

If you like this algorithm activity, here are some more you will love:

Algorithm and Building a Magical Creature Worksheet
Let’s Build an Algorithm Based on Ten Apples Up on Top
How to Make Slime with Liquid Starch Algorithm Coding Activity
Learn to Code with a Children’s Book – Hen Walking Algorithm Printable

You will find more STEM activities like this algorithm coding activity on my Early Learning Science and Early Learning Math boards.

STEM Engineering for Kids- Building an Eraser Tower

January 31, 2016 By Deirdre

Are you looking for a fun Valentine’s Day engineering challenge? I have just the one for you. It uses materials that are reasonably priced. We concentrated on building a tower with our materials. You could easily create an engineering for kids challenge that focused on bridge building or creating 3-D shapes.

All you need for this Valentine’s Day engineering challenge are toothpicks and Valentine’s Day themed erasers. (We found packages of 12 erasers for a dollar at Dollar Tree.)

Before we started building our tower we created small holes in the tops and sides of the erasers. Having the holes already in place really helped us when we were ready to build. The holes on the sides of the erasers did not go all the way through them. The holes on the top did go through to the bottom. We later added more holes where we discovered we needed them.

We started by talking about building a strong foundation. It was decided that we would place tooth picks going from the side of one shape to another. We could have added them going diagonally, but we decided that the tower would be stable enough.

Then we created a second square on the table with toothpicks and erasers. When it was assembled, we added toothpicks on the top of the erasers in that square.

The second square was held upside down over the first square. The vertical toothpicks were than placed into the holes in the center of the bottom square.

When that was done, we had created a cube!

On top of the cube we added the roof of the tower. Just as we did with the second square we placed the tooth picks in the eraser that would be the pinnacle of the building. That eraser section was than turned upside down. The tooth picks were then attached to the second square.

More STEM Engineering for Kids Activities

LEGO Groundhog Shadow Experiment

LEGO Snowflake Patterns

Snowflake Patterns with Blocks

STEM Engineering Bridge Building

You can find even more STEM engineering and science activities on my Early Learning Science board on Pinterest.

LEGO Groundhog Shadow Experiment

January 27, 2016 By Deirdre

We look forward to viewing a groundhog shadow on February 2^nd. Some of us hope that he will see his shadow. While others hope there will not be a ground hog shadow observed. Why not try to create your own LEGO groundhog and explore the various ways to create a groundhog shadow. This would be a a wonderful STEAM experiment!

Making a LEGO Groundhog

If you don’t have an actual groundhog, you can make one. We made one with LEGO. There weren’t enough brown bricks in our LEGO collection to make the groundhog all brown. We decided to use some black brick along with the brown ones. I hope the black stripes don’t keep you from seeing that our creation is supposed to be a ground hog.

Here are the bricks we used to create our ground hog:

brown 1×2 (6)
black 1×2 (7)
brown 2×2 (17)
black 2×2 (9)
brown 4×2 (8)
black 3×2 (4)
brown 6×2 (3)
black 4×2 (5)
black 6×2 (3)
brown short ramp with two bumps (4)
black short ramp with two bumps (2)
black long ramp with two bumps (2)
brown medium sized ramp with two bumps (2)
brown short ramp with bumps on the bottom (2)
clear round brick (1)
large base plate (1)

Groundhog Shadow Experiments

Outdoor Fun

Exploring Angles

Take your groundhog outside and sit him on a platform. We used a small ladder. Then place a science fair board behind him. Try turning your groundhog so he is looking at the board from various angles. He can be turned forwards, side sideways and other various angles.

Making Your Groundhog Shadow Grow or Shrink

Take your groundhog off the ladder. Try holding him make his shadow get really big and super small.

Place the groundhog on the ladder and try moving to the left and right of the groundhog. Notice what direction the groundhog shadow will move.

Indoor Fun

We took the science fair board and the groundhog inside. Rather than using the sun to help create the groundhog shadow.

Moving Right and Left

We found that by moving the flashlight to the right the groundhog shadow moved to the left. The shadow moved to the left when we move the light to the right.

Growing and Shrinking Shadow

When the light shone down on the groundhog from above the shadow got smaller. When the light was backed away from the board and the groundhog the shadow got bigger.

It was fun to watch the groundhog’s shadow change!

Recording Your Results

You will want to have your children record the results of each shadow experiment. Young children could record their results with illustrations or pictures. Older children could use words and pictures to share their results.

Here are some other STEM and STEAM experiments we have done:

LEGO Snowflake Patterns
Snowflake Patterns with Blocks
STEM Engineering Bridge Building

For more science experiments please visit my Early Learning Science board on Pinterest.