From the ages of five onwards, when your kids are in kindergarten, they are at the stage where they are full of wonder, excitement, and questions about everything.
This is the perfect time to introduce them to the world of science. It will make them more curious about the world and help them build a good base for future studies.
Despite all the energy that young kids have, science and maths can get boring if not taught right. This is why you should use visual experiments and other fun activities to explain otherwise difficult concepts.
Here we have a list of some activities you can use.
Great Science Activities for Kindergarten
The following are some of the activities you can perform in class to teach science to kindergarteners. You can use these activities or derive some of your own from these.
This is a fun experiment to do to get kids interested in nature. It is a chance to get out and get your hands dirty.
The children can do a hands-on experiment and see the results taking shape over several days. Each day, you can introduce new concepts, so they are not bombarded by information all at once.
Here’s how the experiment works. You will need some bean seeds, paper towels, and a cookie sheet.
Take the seeds and ask the kids to inspect them and share their findings. It can be anything like the hardness of the shell, the color, the size, etc. You can note them down and compare them to the state of the beans after some days.
Take some damp paper towels, place them on the cookie sheet, and put the bean seeds on them. Cover the beans with more damp paper towels and place them all in sunlight.
Every day, the kids will check the seeds and add water to the towels. After almost a week, the seeds will sprout. You can explain to them how water, air, and sunlight help the seeds to grow.
If you want to mix some concepts of art with science, then this is a great activity.
Through this activity, you can teach kids how rain reaches us through clouds and how it reaches the cloud in the first place. Since this exercise uses colors, it allows learning color mixing as well.
You will need some shaving cream, glass or clear plastic containers, and food coloring for this activity. Fill your container up to ¾ with water and top it with shaving cream. Add food color to the shaving cream. The color will start to fall like rain.
You can add multiple colors to one container and ask the kids to see the color that comes out on the other end. Kids can learn about condensation, evaporation, cloud types, water cycle, and color mixing with this activity.
Learning about light can be very interesting. There are many things you can do with it.
You can use a prism to learn about the colors within white light, or you can talk about how light bends in different objects (otherwise known as refraction). Refraction is what you can teach kids with this experiment. Without all the complicated formulas, you can show them the concept visually.
All you will need is a clear water bottle, or you can use a glass filled with water, sticky notes, and a marker. Draw two parallel arrows going in the same direction on the sticky note, or you can use a paper.
Paste the paper on the wall and place your glass or bottle in front of it. You will see the direction of arrows change when you see them through the water.
When light passes through objects of different densities like water, glass, or plastic, you see this phenomenon. It is similar to how you see words in a mirror.
If you hold a piece of paper with something written on it in front of a mirror, you will see it backward.
This is a holiday experiment that you can have the kids do along with painting easter eggs.
With this experiment, they can learn about chemical bonds and how they interact with each other to produce other compounds. This is a great experiment because they can see the crystals forming.
What you will need for this project are pipe cleaners, borax powder (cleaning product), bamboo skewers/pencils/chopsticks, strings, boiling water, and a jar/bowl. Use the pipe cleaner to make different shapes.
Since it is an Easter activity, you can ask the kids to make egg or bunny shapes. For the bunny, make an oval and twist the ends into two ears.
For eggs, you can add small segments of different colored pipe cleaners and make them into a zigzag shape.
You need to hang the egg into the jar. To do that, you can tie the egg with a string and tie that to the bamboo stick. Make sure the egg doesn’t touch the bottom. Pour water into the jar so that it covers the egg.
Now, add three tablespoons of borax powder per cup and stir it to dissolve. You should use clear jars so the kids can observe the process. You can wait for a day or two to three days.
For further clarification regarding this activity and other similar fun exercises, check out CreativeFamilyFun.net!
As the name suggests, this is another holiday activity. Kids are already into decorating their homes with scary things at Halloween, and it is the best time to teach them something new.
The puking pumpkin experiment can teach kids about chemical reactions. To do this experiment, you need to carve out a pumpkin face and a hole on the top. Since it can get very messy, place the pumpkin on something, like a tray or towel.
Try using a big pumpkin to see the effect. After carving and removing the guts from inside, put ¼ cup baking soda inside, then add some food color drops. You can use any color of your choice; this will make the “puke.”
When you add vinegar to baking soda, you will observe an explosion. Only add small drops of vinegar at a time. If you want more foam, you can add some soap before adding vinegar since soap can trap gas and make more bubbles.
Vinegar and baking soda make carbon dioxide and cause the “puke.” When the kids see the experiment, you can teach them about chemical reactions and how you get a new compound from two different compounds.
This is a very interesting activity through which kids can learn about weather changes and how to predict them.
This is also a fun way to learn about pine cones. All you need for this activity are pine cones.
You can test whether with pine cones because when the weather is dry, the cone opens up, and when there is rain, the cone closes. The opening and closing of pine cones are related to humidity.
When the weather is dry, the pine cone opens to help seed dispersal. When there is rain, the seeds can get waterlogged and will not travel very far, so the cone closes to stop waste.
Through this experiment, the kids can also learn about how plants disperse seeds, and you can introduce pollination to them, too.
To make sure this works, you have to put the pine cones on a window sill. You can hang them with a string so that they don’t fall over when there is wind.
Then, you just need to observe them. For further details regarding this activity, check out IGameMom.com.
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. STEM activities combine different subjects into one project so the kids can learn several skills at one time.
One such activity is this gumdrop bridge STEM game, which helps with fine motor skills. All you need for this game is gumdrop candy, toothpicks, legos, containers, and a bridge-building video.
You can also use other things in place of gumdrop if you want, like marshmallow or playdough. For this activity, ask the kids to come up with their designs and shapes by combining toothpicks and candy.
To get started, you can check out LittleBinsForLittleHands.com to get an idea of the different shapes and how you can use gumdrop and toothpicks to make different structures.
While doing so, you can discuss the shapes with kids and talk about balance and suspension. You can also use legos and containers if you want to add some story to the activity.
You can put the lego characters in containers and make ladders with gumdrops and toothpicks to rescue them.
Another challenge can be to ask the kids to see how tall a bridge they can make.
Making your kids environmentally conscious is important.
They can learn about science and the importance of a clean and healthy environment. Oil spills happen a lot, and whether they are big or small, they can cause a lot of damage to marine life.
To create awareness in kids about this issue, you can do a simple experiment. All you need is a tub of water, some vegetable oil, cotton balls, feathers, dish soap, and a spoon.
If you want, you can add blue food color to water so kids can distinguish between oil and water. Pour some oil into the water. Now using the cotton balls, feathers, and spoon, try to remove the oil.
Kids can try to come up with ways of doing it, like spooning the water out. You can try to soak the oil with cotton balls. With the feathers, you can teach kids about how oil spills can affect birds because the oil gets stuck to feathers.
Through this activity, you should teach kids about how difficult and damaging oil removal can be.
The spine activity is used to teach kids biology. To show them how the spine works, you can use egg cartons and tissue.
Cut the carton into small sections, put tissues between them, and stack them up. The tissues will act as the cartilage between the spine bones.
You can teach kids about how the spine moves and the role the cartilages play. You can also teach them how the spine supports you when you walk and keeps you standing upright.
There are several things you can include, too. For further details and similar ideas, check out EverythingPreSchool.com.
Graphing is an important skill. It helps kids learn counting and organization. To make the activity fun, you can use different objects.
Seashells are an interesting object for this activity. You can go on a beach walk with your kids to collect the seashells. Their various shapes and sizes will make it an engaging activity.
You can add another lesson in the activity and teach the kids about shells and how animals used to live in them. You can do this while collecting the shells.
Once you have collected them and cleaned them off, you can ask the kids to start sorting them in groups. The groups can be according to size, color, or shape.
You can also print out a pictograph frame with drawings of the types of shells at one end, and the kids can stack similar shells together.
These activities involve many objects, but there are some common things among them.
You will need some scissors, paper, markers, glue, and sticks (toothpicks, ice cream sticks, etc.) to set things up. You have to put in some effort to get things ready for them.
You can get the kids involved in the planning process as well if you want. Just keep them away from scissors, and they can learn about neatness.
Some other common things that these activities need are a clear container or jar, sticky notes, and food coloring. Food coloring is used to learn about color mixing.
A lot of these activities are different from one another and hence require unique objects.
Conclusion
STEM activities are encouraged by teachers and schools. They help kids develop logical thinking and learn science.
Since these activities involve different subjects in one activity, kids can learn connections between different things like the weather and how it affects plants.
Early exposure to these things can help kids grasp these concepts better, so it’s essential to include them in the curriculum!
Hi, I'm Amanda! Welcome to Education Outside! Im passionate about educating young minds and helping parents/teachers by providing easy and effective teaching resources. Check out all of my teaching resources on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
