Pantry Experiments!

Snow Day SCIENCE!

It’s been a long winter for much of the country, and that can mean hours of indoor time for the kids, and those exciting or dreaded SNOW DAYS! So how to entertain them once cabin fever has set in and the snow is up to the eyeballs? SCIENCE!

We’ve put together a few easy activities that require only the ingredients in your pantry but pack in a little learning as well.

Baking Soda Fizzle Rocks!

This one has just three ingredients – baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring! Add water a little bit at a time to the baking soda in a bowl until you have a very thick paste, toss in some food coloring, and mold into shapes using your hands. Rocks, blobs, or get fancy and use a gingerbread man mold, any shape works, then just leave them to air dry for a few hours until they’re hard as….rocks!

Now comes the fun part – once they’re hardened, pour some distilled vinegar onto a plate and let the kids drop their rocks! They’ll watch them fizz up and then melt away!

Monster Veggies!

Grab some celery stalks (with leaves is best) or napa cabbage leaves and some food coloring for a demonstration of capillary action (transpiration) and how plants take in water! Fill a few glasses halfway with water, and add a different color food coloring to each one. Place a celery stalk or cabbage leaf into each glass so the liquid is covering about ¼ to 1/3 of the vegetable. Now sit back and watch - results start after just a few hours and are dramatic overnight! The veggies will begin to pull the colored water into their stalks and leaves until they’ve changed colors and then you can let the kids “dissect” the celery to see the bright interiors.

Oobleck!

This one can be little messy so it’s best done in a plastic tub or extra storage container, but it’s also really easy to make. Just take a box of cornstarch and slowly add water until you have a consistency like thick maple syrup. Now grab a few small toys (plastic little army figures etc.) and let the kids have at it! They can tap or punch the Oobleck and it will feel hard and solid, and the toys will even sit on top of it for a time. But if they touch it slowly, pressing their whole hands onto the surface, they will be sucked under! This unique substance behaves as a solid AND a liquid!

ENJOY!