Preschool Science Activities

Make preschool science activities a memorable and fun experience!

Have a go at some of the following tasks and watch your kids faces as they blow enormous bubbles, make wierd sculptures out of ice and see what it would be like not to clean their teeth for a week after drinking lots of Cola!

Icy Cool Preschool Science activities!

Try this cool, ice painting activity with the kids and see what happens when you mix together primary colours.

Ice Painting

You will need:

Ready mixed paint in 2 or 3 primary colors
Ice cube tray or similar.
Lolly sticks or similar.
Use of a freezer.

This is such an effective way of teaching color mixing to kids as well as producing some fab modern art pieces! The results can be stunning and well worth a place on the wall of your classroom!

Pour a small amount of each color into the sections of the ice tray.

Then put a lolly stick into the centre of each one. I found this was not very successful as the lolly sticks were too big . I used tooth picks or barbecue sticks with the sharp ends broken off. These seemed to stay in better.You can cover the whole tray with cling film and then put the sticks in. This makes them even more secure.

Once this is done. Pop the ice tray into the freezer and leave until frozen.

When you're ready to paint. Cover the table with a wipe-able cloth. Set out the paper and extract the colored ice from the tray and away you go!

A Modern Masterpiece as well as a preschool science activity!

Sculptured Ice

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This preschool science activity is an extension of the activity on the Snow Theme page where we made a giant ice ball out of a balloon. We allowed the kids to play with it and eventually put salt over it and watch the balloon shape morph into sculptured creatures.

This time we filled various plastic containers, such as yoghurt pots or ice cube containers, with water and food coloring. Then put them in the freezer until needed.

Meanwhile you will need to get ready

A tray with a covering of water in
A plastic covering for the table
A water spray
A salt shaker

Now its time to get the kids involved.

Tip the ice shapes out of the pots into the tray of water.

Then they can begin experimenting! They can spray water on the frozen shapes and watch what happens. Hold an ice cube in their hands and predict whether it will melt quicker than one in the water,

Try to join 2 of the shapes together by spraying them .Does this work or can they find another way of joining them?

Shake some salt onto the the ice shapes and watch them change shape before their eyes!

Sadly, unlike the first preschool science activity, we cant save these masterpieces to put on display so its a good idea to take some pics of the finished products so you have a record of the children's work. Also its quite a good idea to make a note of their comments and remarks made during their play.

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Nature Art

A great preschool science activity to try out with your preschoolers on a sunny day. They can complete the whole task outside the classroom if you wish! No mess to clear up!

You will need

A shoe box lid or a piece of tough card for each child.
Some school glue
Some natural items such as leaves ,cones, sticks and wild flowers or indeed anything they can find around the school grounds.
Some cling film.
A plastic bag to collect their bits in!

I did remind them about not touching fungi and not picking flowers from the garden area and not collecting too many things so as they get wasted.

After about 10 mins we came together and I gave them their shoe box lid or card.

They spread some glue over the base of the lid and made a picture with the items they had collected by carefully pressing their bits and pieces into the glue.

Some were a bit over enthusiastic and put far too many items on. We talked about the things they had collected and discussed which ones made a good picture and which ones didnt and why.

It also got them naming the items aswell as describing what they looked and felt like.

Home-made GIANT Bubbles

All kids like bubble blowing! But this recipe will blow them away!! A preschool science activity special!

You will need:

1/2 cup of washing up liquid
1/2 cup corn starch
1 tblsp baking powder
1 tblsp glycerine
6 cups water.

To make the mixture, dissolve the corn starch in the water and stir it thoroughly.

Then gently add the rest of the ingredients trying not to allow it to froth up too much.

Wait for a while, at least an hour, stirring occasionally if you see the corn starch start to settle on the bottom of the container.

Meanwhile make the wand.

You will need 2 drinking straws and a piece of yarn about 3 or 4 times the length of 1 straw.

Make a small hole at each end of both straws and feed the yarn through all the holes and then tie a knot to secure it.

Once the bubble mixture is ready, tip it into a wide shallow container and you're away!

Don't forget to take a picture of the biggest one!

Toothpaste Trouble

pre-school-science-activities-egg-and-toothpaste

Don't we all hate nagging our kids to clean their teeth every night? Well check this activity out!

You will need:

A hard boiled egg
A glass
Some Cola
Toothpaste
Toothbrushes

Put the egg into the glass. It is better if you can use real glass ones as plastic ones can absorb the colouring of the Cola.

Pour the Cola into the glass and leave for a good length of time. Overnight, if you can wait.

Ask the kids what they think might happen to the egg.

Have a sneaky look at the egg before you show the kids to make sure it has changed color. Then ask them what they think has happened and why.

You can then explain to them that the egg is like our teeth and can absorb things with a strong colour . It can also eat into our teeth taking off the outside layer and making them more sensitive to hot and cold. So think what would happen if we didnt clean our teeth for a whole week or even longer.

The kids can then set to work to clean the egg with the toothpaste and tooth brushes!

Magnetic Powers

This preschool science activity has so many possibilities for the young experimenter!

You will need:

A large tray [we used the tuff tray from outside but you could use the sand tray or even one of the plastic storage trays from the classroom]
A packet of pasta, rice or dried beans
Various magnets
A collection of metallic and non metallic objects from the classroom
Some pipe cleaners cut into small pieces.

We emptied the pasta into the tray and added all the items we had collected from around the classroom as well as the pieces of pipe cleaner and then ------ let the kids loose!!

They had great fun seeing who could get the most on their magnet before something fell off!

Also they discovered that the block magnet not only picked some of the items up but it also pushed them away if they used the other end.

Another fun magnet activity is using iron filings.

You need: