KITCHEN SCIENCE Turn your kitchen into a science laboratory with these four kid friendly experiments When someone mentions science, do you automatically think of distant laboratories or complicated experiments? Most people do! But science is literally around us all the time. When we wake up each day, the sun has gone around the earth, the days are getting longer or shorter and the weather turns up in its infinite variety. Science is simply the study of what we observe around us every day. So why not engage in some fun and accessible science activities with your kids right in your kitchen! Water, weight, temperature, transformation, texture, touch, taste, light and sound are all waiting to be discovered. All we need is to be aware of the opportunities we could activate. Cooking and baking offer multiple ways to observe science in action. The simplest thing, like making jelly can alert children to how temperature can assist processes. Boiled water is used to dissolve the crystals, the cold water is added for volume and the fridge temperature makes the jelly set. Always bearing safety in mind, children can be encouraged to watch steam rising as food is prepared, how cakes rise in the oven and how eggs change when they are boiled.
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Besides all these incidental observations, you can help them set up simple experiments to engage, entertain and teach.
Four easy experiments to do with young children: Grow beans Start by soaking 5-6 dried white haricot beans overnight in a bowl of water. Next day, place two squares of folded, dampened paper towel into a large sandwich zip lock bag. Put the haricot beans into the bag on one side of the towel. Zip the bag and tape it in a warm place against a window so that the children can see the beans. Within a few days the bean germinates and roots will start to appear. With more days’ patience the first leaves will be visible. When the beans reach this stage, they can be planted out in small pots of soil to become mature plants. The excitement of germination never ceases to amaze me. Growing anything can encourage the gardener in your child.
