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Magic Homemade Bubble Recipe

 

I stumbled across this recipe for giant bubbles a long time ago, but I haven’t had the time (or the ingredients) to make it before. I had a friend over and she brought me some glycerine, because she knew it will come in handy for my weird science experiments. And it did! :)

I tested the recipe from Happy Hooligans, but with some changes.

  • 6 cups water;

  • 1/2 cup corn starch/ corn flour;

  • 1/2 cup Fairy dish detergent;

  • 1 tbsp baking powder;

  • 1 ½ tbsp glycerine.

First mix the water and the corn starch, then add the rest of the ingredients.  The wand can be easily made with 2 straws and some yarn.

 

My bubbles weren’t as big as the ones on the Happy Hooligans blog, but I will give it another try…Apparently, the more bubbles you make, the better it gets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cool Milk Experiment

 

So…here’s a very easy experiment that I’m sure your kids will love - I did, even though I’m a grown-up!

 

What you’ll need: a bowl, 2-3 cups of milk, dish washing liquid, food colouring (at least 2-3 colours), Q-tip, and thick paper.

 

Instructions: Pour the milk in the bowl, then add some food colouring. Dip the Q-tip in some dish washing liquid, then mix the milk with it. The colours will suddenly disperse and they will look like in the photo on the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Place a small paper square in the milk, then take it out and let it dry. It will make a colourful abstract painting.

Have fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food Colouring

 

My new icing colours just arrived by post! I’m so excited…I can’t wait to make play dough with my kids tomorrow :)

 

I only discovered this amazing product last year – and I’m nuts about it. Food colouring is great, because you can use it to create fun sensory trays (by painting rice, pasta, sand, dough, flour), paint with it ( and oil, salt, water), try out science experiments (volcanoes, lava lamps, water absorption), make salt dough and slime, or make crafts.

 

I found great ideas on Pinterest, and these are some of my favourite:

 

Crafts:

Cosmic Glue Suncatchers from babbledabbledo

 

Science Experiments:

Learning how plants absorb water! from pagingfunmums

 

Color Changing Milk: A Creative Science Experiment from kidsactivitieslog

Baking soda and vinegar eruptions from learnplayimagine

Edible slime from growingajeweledrose

 

Painting:

Color – Marbleized Paper from unplugyourkids

You can find other great ideas for food colouring on mommasfunworld

 

What food colouring projects do you like?

 
 

Sweet potato experiment

 

We started growing our own sweet potato plant. We suspended the sweet potato in a small bucket (although a jar is better, because you can observe how the root grows) with some sticks to hold half of the potato outside of the jar.

We put it on a windowsill to get some sun, but unfortunately the weather has been extremely gloomy. In a couple of weeks the roots grew quite long.

 

Make Your Own Wormery

 

Worms are fascinating! I still remember playing with them when I was a kid: we used to build mud houses and drive the worms around J (I’m not joking: we used toy cars. Poor worms!)

The kids kept playing with worms in the yard, but knew almost nothing about them. We decided to learn about the way earthworms move, breathe and what they eat by observing the tiny creatures in our very own wormery. We had lots of fun digging for worms and creating the proper environment for them!

You just need a large jar, gravel and soil and some plants. You can observe them with a magnifying glass.

Some tips:

  • Don’t cover the jar completely; we used foil to cover it, but you can also pierce the lid;

  • You should keep the wormery in a dark place: a cupboard, or covered with black construction paper.

  • Put a paper towel roll in the middle, so the worms move on the outer parts of the jar (we didn’t do that, but we learned from our mistakes).

 

Lava Lamp

 

 

Materials: jar or bottle, effervescent tablets, oil, water, food colouring

 

Instructions: Find a large jar or bottle. Pour water (at least 300 ml) and oil (also around 300-400 ml or more). Put some drops of food colouring (any colour will do). We chose green because the children voted it J

After the food colouring gets to the water, put some Vitamin C tablets (or other effervescent tablets) inside. Observe the gas released through the oil.

 

Tips:

Pour more oil for visible effects

Get a flashlight and put it under the jar

 

Where’s the science?

Water and oil have different densities and that’s why they do not mix – the oil is less dense

Effervescent tablets release gas (cover the jar opening with your hand and see what happens)

 

 

Volcano Experiment

 

Although we didn’t make a realistic looking volcano, this experiment was quite impressive for the kids.

 

Materials: baking soda, vinegar, glass bottle (transparent bottle), paint or food colouring (red/orange), plastic dinosaurs and trees (just to decorate), sensory table or a large tray (to keep the liquid from spilling)

 

Age: kindergarten, primary school

 

Instructions: Place the large tray somewhere all the kids can see. Then, place the dinosaurs and the trees on it and the bottle in the middle. Put baking soda in the bottle and then add some red food colouring (or paint, if you don’t have any food colouring). Pour vinegar into the bottle. The baking soda is a base which will react with the vinegar, which is an acid. They will form carbonic acid which is unstable.

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