Science experiments with colour

I’ve been sitting on these photos for ages, just trying to find the time to upload them and write a blog post about them.  I could be sweeping the floor (and it needs it!) but I am downloading the photos instead.

In the holidays we went to the Science Museum on a rainy day.  We were going to go to the botanical gardens (we were dressed in raincoats and gumboots) but it got cancelled for being too wet so off we went in our gumboots to the science museum.  It cost a bit of money because I added on the extras of the planetarium and laser show but that was the most interesting bits for me and we got to watch two science shows on dry ice and bubbles and balloons.

Anyway Alexander this year has been getting pocket money and he used it to buy a growing tree from the gift shop.  This inspired me to do some colour experiments with the kids as we waited for this tree to “grow”

First experiment:

kitchen towel

textas

water in a container

We drew dots on a piece of kitchen towel and discussed which colour would be “faster” in a colour race.  We dipped the kitchen towel in the water and watched the colours race up the towel. (no pictures)

Second experiment:

kitchen towel

water

4 clear cups with water

2 empty clear cups

food colouring

dish to stop colour staining table

I let the kids choose their colours to add to their 2 clear cups.  I set it up in the container with the colour on the outside and the empty cup in the middle.  We then folded the kitchen towel and put part in the coloured water and bending it over the other end in the empty cup to watch the colours travel up the kitchen towel and then down to mix in the next cup.

We then picked a rose out of our garden and placed it in one of the cups so we could see how plants suck up water and it changed the colour of our rose.

You can see the tree in the background growing. Oh and Emily’s tasting plate for morning tea with a bit of this and that.

Also hanging over the edge of the red and blue container is the kitchen towel with the stripes of colour from the first experiment.

(I started this post on the 20th April, it is now end of May  – oops)

The kids are running circles around me

It’s raining and we’re not venturing outside. We have watched tv, we’ve been painting and Alexander especially is full of energy so while the pair were having morning tea I built an obstacle course.
It worked fine for a while but I think the kids have got too excited when I relaxed the rules and Emily is having a mini breakdown because her bed is messed up because she included it in her obstacle course.
The kids wanted to build their own and I thought it might be good for their working together if they did but Emily built a silly one using her bed and told Alexander he was to sleep in it as part of the course and he messed up her quilt and she got demanding that we HAD to fix it or mummy had to.

When I do it again the bedrooms will be out if bounds so we can avoid this type of thing.

Anyway I started out simple with what I had to hand. We have a pop up tunnel so the kids had to crawl through that.

Then I had a container (fruit bowl) with three juggling squares and they had to toss it in the washing basket.

Them they had to step over a broom stick and step up and down on my wii board, circle around a marker and back over the board, over the stick, toss the beanbags back and back through the timer and I timed it all.
After a few goes of that, they requested longer do I added two dining room chairs which they had to crawl over and under.

This wax great fun trying to beat our PB.

The problem came when I let them design their own and being still young they started adding silly elements.

All is quiet now and I would do it again, just keep a tighter rein on the sillies.