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Tag Archives: Stem experiments for kids

5 Brilliant Ways To Experiment With Oobleck

Making an experiment with oobleck is very easy and a lot of fun for kids (and adults too!). The name oobleck comes from a Dr. Seuss story and is used commonly nowadays to name a non-newtonian fluid made from cornstarch and water. A non-newtonian fluid is a fluid that does not behave according to Newton’s law of viscosity. In other words, it has a different resistance to flow. It is sensitive to pressure and will change from solid to liquid depending on how much pressure we put on it. Because it is so easy to make at home, and it behaves so differently from other things we know, it creates the perfect environment for sneaking in some STEM learning. 

experiment with oobleck materials

In our house, we love to add color to anything. So when we decided to make some oobleck the other day, we got out our food coloring and added it to the mix. The result was fascinating! Because of the special properties of the mixture the colors created beautiful curves and spirals before mixing. In this post, you will learn how to create rainbow art and more brilliant ways to experiment with oobleck. You will also find out how you can engage with your kids so that they can learn from this experiment. 

Oobleck Recipe

All you need to make oobleck is cornstarch, water, and food coloring. We made it in a large oven tray so that we could spread it out before adding color. This way you will get the beautiful effects I was talking about earlier. You will usually need around twice the amount of cornstarch than water (2 cups of cornstarch to 1 cup of water). These would be the steps to follow:

  1. In a large oven tray add 1 cup of water 
  2. Start adding cornstarch until you reach the desired effect (oobleck should feel hard when you try to make it into a ball but as soon as you stop it will flow through your fingers)
  3. Once you achieve the right consistency let it settle and start experimenting

5 Brilliant ways to experiment with oobleck for STEM learning

Making Oobleck in itself is already an awesome and fun experiment. However,  the experiment doesn’t have to end there! If we want learning to stick, we have to go beyond the initial experiment and allow our children to do some discovery on their own. Here are some suggestions for keeping them engaged and curious about the experiment:

brilliant ways to experiment with oobleck
  • Add drops of color and make some rainbow art. This was our favorite part! Yes… adults enjoy this too!
  • Play with loose parts. We used colorful tops and our kid made towers using the oobleck as glue!! Just collect some objects and leave them around the experiment area and see what your kids come up with
  • Use kitchen utensils and observe how different this mixture is to manipulate compared to water
  • Create droplets outside of the tray. We did this outside on our waterproof tablecloth we use for experiments so we didn’t mind the mess. We let some drops fall out of the tray and observed what happened when they dried out. We compared bigger drops and smaller drops and then we added them back to the tray for more fun effects
  • Make a ramp and let the oobleck flow down. We just put a block under our tablecloth, no fancy ramp needed for this but feel free to make one too. We talked about rivers and lakes with this and how different liquids flow

Check out how our rainbow art turned out in this video:

Experiment with Oobleck observations and conversations

If you are doing this with preschool-aged children it is great to just talk and make observations while you do the experiment. By talking with your kids you are helping them build vocabulary so that they can understand the world better. When we make observations, we help them reflect on what is happening and connect ideas. So here are some suggestions when making the oobleck:

  • Add cornstarch gradually and observe the changes: is it getting harder? 
  • Try to make little balls with your hands: what happens? As soon as you stop trying to roll the oobleck into a ball it will flow across your hand
  • What happens if you poke the oobleck fast? What happens if you just gently put your finger on it? When poking fast the oobleck should behave more like playdough being poked and when going slow it will behave more like pancake batter

For older elementary school kids you can add complexity to your conversation by talking about the following concepts and asking questions:

  • Liquid/solid: when does it behave like a liquid/solid? 
  • Viscosity: how does this mixture flow compared to water? You can use a ramp to compare
  • Pressure/force: when we apply pressure what happens? Does the amount of pressure change the consistency?
  • Color mixing: what happens when we add drops of color? Why do you think it doesn’t mix directly?

We always suggest to wonder out loud with your kids instead of asking question after question. For example, “if I apply pressure I wonder what will happen?” or “what do you think will happen when we add color?”. It is always more fun to discover together than to be drilled.

Follow-up activity: Comparisons

Once you’ve explored oobleck, make something else. We mixed plain wheat flour with water to see how different the results were. It’s good for kids to have something to compare and as a bonus the entertainment lasted even longer!

This is definitely something you can repeat many times and it is always fun. And each time you do it you might find some cool way to play and experiment with oobleck. So make sure to always have cornstarch and food coloring available. 

Happy STEM learning!

Check out other brilliant activities for young kids:

  • Simple Science Project For Kids: Float or Sink
  • Math For Toddlers: Easy Sensory Bath Time Activity
  • Fun Color Experiment For Toddlers Who Love A Good Mess
  • STEM Activity: Build a Pyramid and Learn about Shapes
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Save Water Activity: A Simple And Easy Experiment

Water is the main source of life. We use it all the time. Not only does our body need it to stay hydrated and keep going but it is our number one tool at home. We clean ourselves, our clothes and our home with it, we cook with it, and sometimes we even play with it! Water is a great sensory material for young children. Most families around the world get water directly from their tap which makes life so much easier. However, it is important to use water consciously so that the planet and our pockets don’t suffer. Enter the battle with our kids and the nagging parents telling kids to stop the running water. What if you could use that moment for a save water activity? 

save water experiment

Wasting water can be an abstract concept for kids. I know our little one has no feeling of how much water she uses, especially because it is such a fun thing to play with. The tap keeps running and water just keeps coming out and then going down the drain so it is difficult for young kids to grasp the concept of wasting water. So one day I asked myself if there was a better way to help her understand the amount of water that is used when we keep the tap running.  I prepared a simple save water activity we could do together that is easy and very visual for kids. It gave us the chance for a constructive play-talk and sneak in some STEM. Just a heads up, you will be using extra water for this activity so make sure you can save it for watering your plants or feeding your pets so it doesn’t go to waste 😉

Save Water Activity 

Materials you will need:

  • Stopwatch (or your mobile phone)
  • Cups
  • Pen and Paper

Save Water Experiment

  • Tell your kids you want to find out how much time it takes them to wash their hands. It is not a race, the important thing is to wash hands properly. Prepare the stopwatch or mobile phone and time how long it takes them.
  • Once you know how long it took them to wash their hands you will set the timer to that exact time. It took my kid 5 minutes!!! 
  • Grab all the cups, start the timer and run the tap. Start filling up cups until the timer goes off. Now you have a visual understanding of how much water is needed to wash your hands.
save water experiment

Looking at all the cups of water opens up a number of possibilities to sneak in some critical thinking, math and to reflect on how much water we use! Bear in mind that it might be a bit too abstract for toddlers but it is never too early to start these conversations! And as parents you may also be surprised by the outcome,

Time for Reflection and Math

You can ask questions like:

  • With all these cups, how many times could we fill up our dog’s bowl?
  • How many times could we fill up your sippy cup/drinking bottle?
  • Is that a lot of water?

For older kids:

  • If you should be drinking 5 cups of water a day, how many days of drinking water do you use when washing your hands? (If your kids are motivated you can try it with taking a shower… you will fill up many more drinking cups!)

Sneak in some Critical Thinking

  • Repeat the experiment with a half-opened tap. Ask beforehand how many cups they think it will fill? 
  • If your kid is older you could ask them if they know where the water comes from. This depends locally but usually from a water spring or reserve close by. How could we find out? 
  •  Also, for older kids it would be interesting to estimate how much water they use during one month or a whole year! Suggestions to do this:
    • Grab a pen and paper and write down all the activities that require water in a week (how many showers or baths thay have, how many times they brush their teeth or wash their hands, how much they drink…)
    • Use this experiment to calculate how many cups each activity is
    • Add up the number of cups per week
    • Convert cups to liters (1 liter is approx 4 cups) or gallons ( 1 gallon is 16 cups)
    • Multiply this number by four and you have an estimate of their water consumption for the whole month!! They will be surprised how many bathtubs it would fill. 
    • Multiply by 12 and you have their yearly consumption!
    • If you do it for the whole family you could cross-check it with your water bill, see if you were close!

Usually we don’t have any overview of how much water we use in a single day. You can save water in so many different ways or at least be aware of your water consumption. I hope you find the post inspiring and become active!

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve done the experiment. Let me know in the comments below if you were surprised by the amount of water! 

More Fun Activities and Games:

  • Movement and 5 Senses Scavenger Hunt
  • Stay At Home Discover: Fun Ways To Use Straws
  • Stay At Home Math: Fun Games For Movement And Learning
  • STEM Game: The Sound and Feel of Materials
  • DIY Math Game with Playdough
  • STEM challenge: The Tower of Random Things
  • Fun Color Experiment For Toddlers Who Love A Good Mess

Make sure to Bookmark the Stay At Home STEM post which will be updated with all our fun STEM activities that are perfect for doing at home.

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Hi! We are Anni and Stefan, a mix of engineering with a dash of education and a pinch of social work, blended together and turned into parents who have a passion for creating lightbulb moments. We want to help you bring STEM learning into your home in a way that is fun, educational and challenging enough so that children can develop their thinking skills. ♥

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astemfulmind

Anni | STEM + Nature Learning
Where will the marble roads take you? 🚗🚦🚧 Where will the marble roads take you? 🚗🚦🚧 🧱
One day we set out to make some mazes or marble runs with clay. I thought my kids would each want to do their own but it ended up being a team project and I'm so glad it went that way! Our project turned into Marble city, with roads and many more fun things along the way. 
I drew a road with a start and a finish, a few loops here and there and some intersections so that they could cover it with clay. And then I just let their imagination take the lead. The beauty of open-ended activities and resources is you never know where it will take you. There were trees, mountains, tunnels, bridges and even stop lights! And after it was created there was imaginative play, role play and a lot of marble traffic!
It was fascinating to observe my kids build a world from clay and other resources we had around the house. The process of building it was play and then that play was extended and transformed by actually playing in the world they created 🧡
It is also definitely something that can be done outside. We did it out on our terrace but I'm excited to try it out in nature where there are even more open-ended resources!! 🌿🌰🍂🌸🪨
Learning new things ✨🥰 I have started a new Learning new things ✨🥰
I have started a new journey, training to be a Forest School Leader. I am not exactly sure in which direction it will take me but it was something that felt right. 
The ethos of Forest school and the role of the reflective practitioner just resonates with me, the outdoor, simple and slow child-led playful learning community. It is what I try to do with my own children and it's wonderful to extend and consolidate everything that I have learned over the last years into something that will serve me and my family as well as other families with children. 
I am very excited to show you how I adapt the Forest School practice to my parenting. We have already created some pretty cool indoor shelters, hammocks for dolls with ropes and cloth, and continue to use our natural materials for child-led experiments and activities. I am also learning to observe my children better and reflect on their needs and interests, which is key to their holistic growth and development.
Hope you find this as inspiring as I do and follow along for some reflections and of course for the nature play and wonder 💚🧡
The wonder of simple experimentation ✨ When you The wonder of simple experimentation ✨
When you let the child lead you never know what will happen. Sometimes nothing really happens, and that's ok too. But then there are times when you bring out some materials and "tools", add a bit of water and you suddenly have a full on experiment station on your hands!
I saved some pumpkin seeds from a pumpkin I had baked, thinking they might come in handy some time. I didn't have anything in mind, but when my 5-year-old said she wanted to do an experiment I offered them to her. 
She directly asked for water to check if pumpkin seeds sink or float. So we gathered water, some containers and a few extra tools (just some kitchen utensils). Turns out some actually sink and others float! We discussed why this might be happening and then I asked her if she thought she could find a way to separate them with the tools we had… this led to some critical thinking, some trial and error and a lot of experimentation and conversations. She was engaged, on a mission, and she had initiated the experiment herself. 
💜 I love watching these moments unfold and they just further convince me that experiments don't need to come with flashy reactions, or bright colors. They can be simple, like this one. Experiments should make us think, tickle our minds with questions about what we see and drive us to test possibilities that will reveal answers, solutions or rethink our questions. And childhood is full of moments like these if you look close enough.
The art of noticing the small details 🐚✨ A s The art of noticing the small details 🐚✨
A simple activity with natural materials and a magnifying glass. I just set this up on the table and we started looking at each material and paying attention to what we could see. It made us think and wonder about patterns, irregularities and just other things we might not notice otherwise. 
We learned to pay attention to details and that things might look different depending on how close you look. And these observations lead to questions and these questions lead to a search for answers, discovery, learning. 
And all it takes is a magnifying glass and some nature 🤎🧡
DIY OOBLECK BLOCKS 🧱🌽💧 These Oobleck blo DIY OOBLECK BLOCKS 🧱🌽💧
These Oobleck blocks are so easy to make and were a perfect addition to our dry Oobleck play as it gave us the chance to build structures and create small worlds. 
Materials you'll need:
🌽Cornstarch
💧Water
🧊Ice trays
🧘‍♀️Patience
To prepare the Oobleck you mix 2 parts cornstarch to 1 part water. If you have never tried Oobleck you are in for a fun treat! It is a great sensory experience for kids and really engaging as it behaves both like a solid or fluid depending on the pressure it's under. 
Once you are done experimenting with Oobleck try filling some ice cube trays with it and then let it dry (it can take some days, which can be tricky for little kids but is also a great opportunity to practice patience).
❗A lot of ours cracked and broke so make sure you prepare enough. We made 3 trays.
🧱 That's it! We crushed some of the broken blocks and used the other ones to create, nurturing some STEM skills through play. 
For more ideas for STEM and nature play follow along!
"If children are to keep alive their inborn sense "If children are to keep alive their inborn sense of wonder… they need the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in." Rachel Carson
These words truly resonate with me.
Sharing the path of learning and discovery with our children is so beneficial and not only for our kids. It is so positive for us too! It reawakens our inner child, our own sense of wonder. It allows us to slow down, to play. 
We explore together, we seek out the answers to our questions, we experiment and play, we struggle to find solutions, we persevere and through these experiences we learn. About the world, about each other, about ourselves, giving us the chance to bond over something beautiful.
👉 Follow along for inspiration on family activities that nurture curiosity and drive learning
Have you ever let Oobleck dry? ☀️ Letting Oob Have you ever let Oobleck dry? ☀️
Letting Oobleck dry is the best way to clean it up but it also gives you the chance to use it again in a different way. 
I like to leave it in a tray or cooking pan so it spreads out and dries faster. Once it's dry you can just poke it and scrape it out.
It crumbles and cracks nicely between your fingers and has a lovely texture that my kids (and I) really enjoy.
You can keep it dry or combine it again with water to get the gooey, slimy, and fascinating Oobleck back.
👉 I'm also testing a different way to use dry Oobleck so make sure you stay tuned!
DIY STONE STACKING GAME 🌈🪨 Stone stacking h DIY STONE STACKING GAME 🌈🪨
Stone stacking has many benefits, for both kids and adults. It encourages patience, creative processing, concentration, focus, and hand-eye coordination. We love doing this when we are outdoors and in nature, it gives us a moment to stop and relax. 
This simple DIY is inspired by all those stone stacking moments and adds a bit of a challenge to nurture those skills even more. 
👉 This is how we prepared it:
We collected stones and selected 6 of them for the game, we painted them using acrylic paints, and borrowed a color dice from one of our board games. If you don’t have a color dice just add stickers to a normal one.
👉 How we played:
Players take turns to roll the dice, find the stone that matches the color and place it on the stack. 
🌈 It’s pretty simple, but it adds a new layer to simple stacking, as you navigate having to put bigger and heavier stones on top. It also encourages problem solving, conversations and observations which are key drivers of learning. 
💫 For more simple nature and STEM play you can take outdoors and that nurtures learning make sure to follow along
Motherhood is definitely reawakening my childlike Motherhood is definitely reawakening my childlike curiosity and wonder 💫🌱🦴 
As we were on one of our nature walks one day we found some animal bones in the forest and our reaction was… wow!! Let’s take them home! After packing them in a bag, we decided it would be a good idea to clean them before examining them.
A quick google research revealed that we could use hydrogen peroxide to clean and whiten the bones. Gloves on and to work!
With great care we handled the bones and the hydrogen peroxide, saw the fizzy bubbles come out and observed the reaction (a bit of chemistry at play here!) We talked about what was happening and about the bones themselves, how they are different from ours, what type of animal they could be from according to their teeth (herbivore?) and a lot more.
This process of curiosity, hands-on exploration and discovery is a key part of childhood. Children are naturals at this, and if we follow along and support this process who knows what amazing things we might discover together. What is certain is that by exploring together like this we are nurturing their natural curiosity, cultivating a love for discovering new things and giving them the tools to drive their own learning. 
Never would I have thought that cleaning bones would turn into a great hands-on learning experience. But I have learned that following my children usually leads to moments of discovery like this.
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