As your youngster starts exploring art, emotions, and reading, make sure science still has a seat at the table. Your child naturally wants to learn everything they can about their surroundings, and science is just another extension of showing them what marvels are occurring right under their noses. Here are a few science activities you can do at home to start introducing your little scientist to the natural world.

Carnation Crush

The next time you are at the store, swipe a few white carnations into your buggy, and some food coloring if you don’t already have some at home. Have your child fill up different glasses with some water and drop different food dye colors into each cup, respectively. Show your child how you are cutting the bottom of the carnation stems, and then let them try with supervision. Next, drop one flower in each cup. Over time, the white carnations will absorb the water and the dye, coloring the petals. This is a great way to show kids how plants absorb nutrients from the water.

Get Salty

There’s one way to show them! Fill a container with water and salt. Ask your child what you think will happen next and write down their prediction. Then, you play the waiting game, but it’s a great way to punctuate morning routines because they will want to check it every day for the next several days until voila: the water has evaporated and left behind salt. You can do another spin on this by gathering ice, food color, and salt in a tray. Showing how the salt melts the ice also demonstrates how salt trucks keep the roads safe.

Be Bubbly

For this fun idea, you will probably want to be outside. By probably: definitely. Using a funnel, pour pop rocks into a deflated balloon. Next, wrap the mouth of the balloon around a soda bottle. Help your child tilt the balloon up so the pop rocks fall into the soda bottle. The balloon will expand as the pop rocks meet the carbonated soda. This is another way of showing your child an example of chemical reactions between different substances. Baking soda volcanos can come next!

Catching Waves

Want to show your child how sound travels? Everything you need is probably already in your house. Find a ruler, a metal spoon, and some string. Tie a knot around the spoon so the string hangs on two long ends. Wrap the ends of the string around your child’s index fingers, and then tell them to plug their ears. The spoon should hang just below their waist, this is where that ruler came in handy. Gently strike the spoon with the ruler, and get ready for our little Einstein’s reaction!

And these are just a few science experiments you can do at home! There are several junior science workbooks, websites, and apps that can give you daily science activities that will have your child crying: EUREKA!

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