Fun with Science
(Experiments for Preschoolers)
Susan Elsass, Early Childhood Educator

To really get young child thinking, try some science experiments at home with adult guidance and supervision.These experiments will strengthen your child’s vocabulary, observation, and prediction skills. Also, young children will learn to make conclusions about what they’ve observed.

Children love to do experiments because they are actively engaged in the process and also feel very grown up. How about starting your own “Science Fridays” at home?

An adult can read the directions and the preschooler can do the experiment. The steps or directions should be very clear and followed in order. This will help your child practice following directions, a very important school readiness skill. Most importantly you will strengthen your relationship with your child as you learn and discover things together.

Things to Remember for a Successful Experience:

• Choose a time when you have 20 minutes or more. This will allow enough time for set up, doing the experiment and clean up.
• Keep the atmosphere calm and relaxed.
• Find a space that can be cleaned up easily.
• Here are some basic questions to ask your child as he/she does the experiment.

What do you see?
What do you smell?
What do you hear?
What do you think is going to happen?
Why so you think that?
What happened?

• Listen to their observations and confirm or challenge them if you see things differently.

Here are Some Experiments to Try at Home:

 Float an Egg Experiment

• Fill two glasses half-full of water.
• Add two tablespoons of salt to one glass of water. Stir the water carefully until all the salt dissolves.
• Gently put an egg into each glass of water. The eggs can be hardboiled.

Then watch to see what happens. The egg is heavier than the water and cannot float in it. The salt water is heavier than the egg, so the egg can float in it.
 
Soak Raisins in Water Experiment 

• Fill two glasses with water.
• Add two tablespoons of salt to one glass and stir until salt dissolves.
• Drop some raisins into both glasses.
• Check the raisins after an hour. The raisins in the plain water will expand. The raisins in the salt water will stay the same.

Lift an Ice cube Experiment

• Put an ice cube in a glass filled with water.
• Cut a piece of string about 6 inches long. Lay the piece of string across the ice cube.
• Sprinkle salt on top of ice cube. The salt will melt the ice a little.
• Wait two minutes. Lift the string up. The ice cube will stick to the string. As the ice has refrozen over the string.

Additional Resources: 

www.pbskids.org/zoom/activities/preschool

www.education.com/activity/preschool/science

"Easy Science Experiments", by Diane Molleson and Sarah Savage
Scholastic Inc.1993