Fast Explosions

Project Learn and Grow
Fast Explosions with Soda

All you Need

• Diet soda
• Mentos

The kids love explosions so I thought this one would be simple and fun.  I found out people use Diet soda so it's less sticky.  I wanted to do and experiment and use diet soda and some regular soda and see which one works best.  The kids picked out grape and orange for the regular soda.  The diet soda worked the best.  It wasn't as big of an explosion as I thought it would be, but the kids loved it.

The grape soda was barely an explosion.

The orange soda got a little bigger then the grape, but still not a lot of fun.  Our conclusion was the diet soda works the best.

Project Learn and Grow

Bouncing and Shrinking Eggs

Today we experimented with eggs.  I have seen a lot of pins on pinterest about how to make eggs bounce so we had to try it.  

All you need:

• Eggs
• Vinegar
• Corn syrup
• Water
• Food Coloring
• Sugar

We started out soaking the eggs in vinegar for 1-2 days.  We just put the eggs in a bowl and made sure they were covered with water.  We soaked them for 2 days and the eggs shells came right off and dissolved in the vinegar.  Then you can lightly bounce them on the counter top.  You need to be very careful doing this or they will break.  Just the outside is bouncy.  Colin got a little excited and broke a couple of eggs.  

Next we took a bowl of just water and a bowl of water with lots of sugar in it and wanted to see which one floated and which one sank.  The kids loved seeing how the egg floated in the sugar water and the egg sank in just water.  

Then we decided to color the egg that we shrank so we stuck it in a bowl of water and green food coloring.  This just takes 30 minutes to get it a decent color.  Then we put it in the bowl of corn syrup and let it sit for 24 hours.  The next morning it was a shrunken egg.  

To make the egg big and bouncy again we put it into a bowl of water and after 2 hours it was back to it's bouncy size.  

This was really fun for the kids.  They loved seeing how much the egg changed everyday.  

Project Learn and Grow Clouds

Cloud Jars

For our project learn and grow day we experimented with cloud jars.  We are studying the letter C and the kids love food coloring so this was perfect.
All you need

• A jar
• Shaving cream
• Food coloring
• Water
• Droppers

We filled cups up with water and food coloring.  Then we filled the jars 2/3rd full of water and applied shaving cream to the top.  The more shaving cream you add the longer it takes for the food coloring to go down into the jars.  It took us about 30 minutes to see good results, but the kids never got bored.  Just dip dropper into food colored water and drop it onto the shaving cream.  Have the kids do it over and over again until they are amazed by the transformation.

This is how they looked when they were all done.  Cody's is the middle jar, he added so much at the end it was all one color.  The other two are hard to see, but the color is slowly moving down the bottom.
Soap Cloud

All you need

• Bar of Ivory soap
• A plate

Just stick the soap on the plate and put it in the microwave for 2 minutes.  After a few seconds it starts to form into a cloud and the kids like watching it get bigger and bigger.  Remove it from the microwave and let it cool.  Then the kids can hold it.

After we were done with that we decided to make bath paint out of it.
Bath Soap Paint

All you need

• The bar of Ivory soap microwaved and crumbled
• Boiling water
• Blender
• Food coloring
• Plastic cups

Put the crumbled soap into the blender.  Pour a small amount of boiling water into the blender and blend until it has a yogurt consistency.  Then stir in the food coloring.  When the kids took a bath it had got hard so I stuck the cups in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it up.  Watch it while in the microwave cause it will rise up and spill out.  We then took it to the bath and used paint brushes and the kids had a blast.

Balloon Experiments

I have made Thursday's our Project Learn and Grow day where we always do a science experiment. the kids love experiments so this is the funniest day for them.  Today we had fun with balloons so we raced balloons and made a balloon hovercraft.

Balloon Racers

 

All you need is

• String
• Straws
• Balloons
• Tape

We just tied one side of the string to a chair and put a straw through it and then tied the other end of the string to another chair.  We blew up the balloon and taped it to the straw.  We held the end of the balloon and let go to see who's balloon won.  In this lesson the kids learned about force.

Balloon Hovercraft

All you need is

• CD
• Balloon 
• Any glue that glues to plastic
• Sport bottle cap

We glued the sport bottle cap to the cd and let that dry.  When it's all done we blew up the balloon and attached it to the water bottle cap.  Then we let go and watched it hover on the table.  It's really hard to see so we tilted the table and watched it glide down.  In this lesson the kids learned about friction.

The kids love balloons, science, and anything that makes them say wow so this was a big hit with them.