When you work through science with your kids, you want great activities and easy science experiments that will have them fully engaged! Science experiments for kids found in this article will get that reaction! And you’ll find that they are cool science experiments that teach life skills, too. What more can you ask for out of science?
Science study involves the development of important skills, including life skills. For children, learning life skills is a common desire for parents, especially for younger ages who are learning boundaries like rules, preferences, and even gravity!
Science is everywhere and when you teach kids science, you’re teaching them these life skills:
And more! These skills are needed in many areas of life, including work. By teaching science, you are leading your students to be able to work in many different environments effectively.
Before you get started in any of these science experiments for kids, be sure to get adult safety goggles and child safety goggles! You won’t need safety equipment for all of the activities listed below, but having them on hand for all of your experiments is always wise! Now…let’s get to those science experiments!
Science experiments for kids are included in most curricula that you might use, especially in the older grade levels. These learning activities often use basic, household items that you can find around your house or from a science supply store online. Many basic science projects you will already be familiar with, like making rock candy or an erupting vinegar volcano. Simple science experiments can range from STEM activities that meet your children’s interests to activities that can be made into science fair projects. They can also be simple DIY projects or pre-made science kits that have all the materials you need.
Science experiments, no matter the level, can teach the scientific method. Whether you actively teach it or not, your students will become familiar with the steps and when you introduce the term, they’ll already feel a familiarity with it.
Let’s get started!
This science experiment is a favorite for kids. It provides the opportunity to talk about animal habits and watch a living animal grow through its life cycle! Here’s what you’ll need:
Note: This is a longer-term project. It will take up to nine weeks for the tadpole to develop legs and about 12 weeks for the beginning of frog development. You can purchase tadpoles or look for your own in ponds, lakes, or rivers.
Through the development of the tadpole, you can take note different parts of the tadpole/frog and ask & discuss these questions:
Visit our article here about the life cycle of frogs and to get this free printable to go along with this activity!
This is a science experiment for kids that focuses on natural vs artificial light for the photosynthesis of plants. Light consists of several different wavelengths, each of which produces its own color. These colors are what you see when you run light through a prism to create a rainbow. Sunlight is rich in red and blue hues, both of which are extremely important to plant growth. And artificial light often provides very little energy for plants, but do you know why? Give this a try to find out more.
This science experiment for your kids focuses on composting and plant growth. A compost that is mature and relatively free of contaminants, and has favorable physical and chemical properties, should enhance the growth of plants. But there are many questions about the effect of specific composts on plants. Determine the effect of compost on plant germination and growth.
Design your own experiment. There are lots of possibilities, but we’ve listed a few for you here.
• Test various combinations of soil and compost on plant growth. For example, you might want to dig a soil sample from your yard and mix it with various amounts of finished compost for planting experiments. (Natural soil is better than prepackaged potting soils for experiments such as this because the potting mixes are formulated for optimal plant growth and already contain significant amounts of compost or humus.)
• Another possibility is to mix your own potting soil by using vermiculite, sand, and compost. Creating several mixtures using the same percentages but different types of compost is a good way of comparing the influence of the various types of compost on plant growth. For example, you could compare compost at various levels of maturity, compost created using different mixtures of organic wastes, or vermicompost (from worm casings) versus compost created in a thermophilic system.
• If you are interested in investigating the effects of compost tea on plant growth, you could fill the pots with sandy soil or potting medium such as vermiculite, then use compost extracts for watering.
Record your findings daily about which seeds have germinated, any plant growth you see and can measure, and other observations about the plants and their health.*
Weather-related experiments for kids are always good choices! This one looks at evaluating air pressure and is relatively easy to do with supervision.
Air seems like the lightest thing in the world, but it actually pushes down on you and the ground with a great deal of force. This force is called air pressure. Air pressure doesn’t always stay the same; meteorologists measure its changes with a barometer. We already saw that when air heats up it begins to rise. When it rises, it doesn’t push on the ground with as much pressure. An area full of light, warm air is called a low-pressure zone. Areas with cool, denser air are called high-pressure zones. What happens when a low-pressure zone and a high-pressure zone are right next to each other? Do this experiment to find out! Have an adult help with the oven and matches.
What happened? When you lit the candle the first time you did it in an area where the air pressure was constant, so the smoke flowed straight up. When you set the pans side-by-side, the ice cooled the air around it, creating a mini high-pressure zone, and the sand warmed the air around it to create a mini low-pressure zone. Air always flows from a high-pressure zone to a low-pressure zone to even out the pressure – this is what causes wind. You made a tiny breeze between the pan of ice and the pan of sand, and the smoke floated sideways in the breeze. The same thing happens between cold ocean water and hot beach sand, which is why there is almost always a breeze at the beach!
Look here for more weather-related experiments. Or, get this weather experiment kit that contains instruments for measuring weather and comes with a detailed 12-page weather guide.
The DNA that a person inherits from their parents determines many personal characteristics and traits, like whether someone is right- or left-handed or the color of their eyes. In this science project, you will examine fingerprints from siblings, as well as pairs of unrelated individuals to figure out if general fingerprint patterns are genetic or random.
Have you ever looked at two people and said, “you must be related”? We can often tell that two people are related because they appear to have similar physical traits. This is because children receive DNA from each parent. All biological siblings are a mixture of both parents’ DNA. If DNA determines fingerprint patterns, then siblings are more likely to share the same fingerprint category than two unrelated individuals are.
Hard surfaces often show fingerprints when dusted with a very fine powder, which is how we will conduct this experiment.
Note: Fingerprint powder is very messy, so practice with it in a controlled area. Start out dusting a microscope slide to get the technique down and then you can move on to dusting other surfaces in your house.
Have some fun seeing bacteria grow! This is a very practical science experiment for kids where you can swab just about anything: doorknobs, the toilet, the sink, your phone, a chair, the door, a favorite toy, and more to find bacteria growing in your house! It may very well change the way you see things around you.
Place the petri dishes out of the way in a dark, room-temperature area. In about 3-7 days you’ll see some growth. So start checking on day three! You could also place them under a lamp to speed up the process. Maybe try it both ways and compare! Here’s a great video showing and explaining the steps to preparing your petri dish.
Looking at liquid density is another great science experiment for kids.
An object’s density is determined by comparing its mass to its volume. There are many science experiments that help us see how various items have different densities. Just as a solid has density, liquids have density, too. (Use a Liquid Density Kit for further study!)
Will adding salt make the water denser? Will adding sugar make the water denser? Which is denser, sugar water or saltwater? Write down what you think will happen to the density of water if you add salt or sugar.
Try putting a raisin in each of the beakers. Does it float? Remove the raisins with a spoon.
Were your predictions correct? Did adding salt and sugar to the water make the water denser or less dense? Which was denser, the saltwater or the sugar water? (Hint: floating level is the least dense.)
Polymers! These types of science experiments for kids are always a crowd favorite!
There are lots of different types of polymers, including plastic, rubber, Jell-O, glue, camera film, materials such as nylon, and even natural fibers from wood and cotton. This slime polymer has the properties of a solid and a liquid at once.
Keep your slime in a plastic zip-lock bag in the fridge when you are not playing with it.
The slime you just made is called a polymer (say: PAUL-UH-MER). The word polymer means ‘many parts.’ White glue is one type of polymer. When you mixed water with the white glue, the glue formed long chains of thousands of little molecules that you couldn’t see until you added the Borax solution. The Borax had a reaction with the glue – it linked all those chains together, which made the whole mixture thicker and turned it into a blob of slime, a different type of polymer!
Find more fun polymer experiments here!
When my kids were young we did a lot of impromptu experiments with magnets. This science experiment for kids will make your kids feel like they are really learning science.
A single strand of wire produces only a very weak magnetic field, but a tight coil of wire (called a solenoid) gives off a stronger field. In this experiment, you will use an electric current running through a solenoid to suck a needle into a straw!
When you hooked your solenoid up to a battery, an electric current flowed through the coils of the wire, which created a magnetic field. This field attracted the needle just like a magnet and sucked it into the straw. Try some more experiments with your solenoid – will more coils make it suck the needle in faster? Will it still work with just a few coils? Make a prediction and then try it out!
You can find more electromagnetism experiments here.
Poinsettia plants practically scream Christmas and in this science experiment for kids, you’ll have a way to use that Poinsettia! So what do you do with them once Christmas is over and the rest of the decor is packed away? Use their red leave for an easy chemistry science project! In this two-part experiment, first you’ll make poinsettia pH paper from poinsettia leaves. Then you can use your poinsettia pH test strips to investigate acids and bases.
Follow the steps in this project that accompany the red cabbage pH test strip experiment to use your poinsettia strips to compare solutions for acidity and alkalinity (basicity). And read this article about acids and bases.
Of course, there are many more fun science experiments for kids out there. Many call for household products that are easy to come by. When I was teaching, I used to keep a Rubbermaid tub of these kinds of things to have on hand. Many of them could be used in multiple projects, or as needed by my kids for their “passion projects”.
And, of course so much more! You can even use things like a lava lamp that might be sitting around your house. Make this box specific to what interests you and your students.
Have fun doing these fun science experiments for kids!