Learning at Home OSC KidZone Week 21

STEAM Activity:

Can You Stand on a Paper Cup?

This a simple activity you can do with your children indoors or outside. All you need are paper cups, and cardboard to place on the top. Start with a first layer seeing how many cups it will take to hold your child steady. Once its steady you add another layer and test out the stability again. Do not go higher than 3 layers of this activity. Disclaimer: This activity is highly suggested to be supervised. 

Science Activity:

Invisible Ink

Send out secret messages to family and friends with this invisible ink experiment! All you need is lemon juice or milk – or you can use both to see which version of this invisible ink would be different or work best. Follow these steps to create your invisible ink!

Step 1 – Gather your ingredients and tools – for this experiment you will need paper, a cotton swab, a heat source (such as lamp, or stove top, or blow dryer) and milk or lemon.

Step 2 – If you have chosen lemon juice as your choice of ink, squeeze your lemon into a glass. Mix it with a tablespoon of water. Dip your cotton swab into the ‘ink’ and start writing. Once your done writing, let it sit out and dry.

Step 3 – Once it is all dry, adults should hold the sheet of paper over the heat source and watch as your message appears!

Step 4 – As the ‘ink’ heats up, the lemon juice or milk will oxidize and turn brown.

You can also try vinegar, honey or orange juice as well and see which one works best!

Physical Activity

Crab Walk Race

This is a great way to practice bilateral coordination, strength, motor control and body awareness for children! All you need is your child and perhaps you! Create a start line and finish line for the race (outdoors is great for this, however, if it is not possible make sure to create extra space indoors). Have your child sit on their bottom, placing hands on the floor behind them, pushing themselves upward creating a table-like form. When their ready start the race from one end to the other!

If you want to make it more challenging or if it's too easy, try it on various surfaces – such as inclines, declines, hard, soft etc.) For extra core balance try placing a small item like a book on their belly and see if they can walk without having it fall off.

Creative Activity:

Salt Pendulum Art

A combination of science and art is always exciting for children to experience. Try this science creative at home with your children.

Here are the items you will need:

• Salt – can add food colouring if you want different colours
• Funnel
• Thumbtack (optional)
• Beads (Optional)
• String
• Hot glue
• Black paper, or cardboard
• Tape
• A doorway for hanging the pendulum

Here are the steps to follow:

1. Create 3 evenly spaced holes near the top rim of the funnel
2. If you are using thumbtacks, push them through the holes and hot glue a bead on each point to protect your finger. If you are opting out of the thumbtack and bead simply cut 3 evenly measured string pieces – roughly 10’’ – 12’’ and loop each one through the hole and tie them together at the top. Use hot-glue to secure the ends where you have looped the string.
3. Find a place to hang the pendulum – this can be a doorway or a location that you can easily reach and clean afterwards.
4. Once you have found a place to hang the pendulum, cut a long piece of string and tie it to the knotted strings in the pendulum. Remember that when salt is placed in the funnel it will be weighed down so as a tip tape the end of the funnel shut and pre-fill it with salt when hanging.
5. Place your paper underneath the pendulum.
6. It's ready! Have your child remove the tape from the bottom and swing gently waiting until it stops on its own!

TIP: if you want to keep the art working make sure you put glue, any kind, on the paper before releasing the salt.

Additional Resources:

https://www.crayola.com/athome  – This website has a collection of videos and art instructions for young children.  

https://www.yummytoddlerfood.com/blog/ – Mommy blog about foods toddlers will eat and made easy