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In this paper they will learn the method of subtraction.

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In classroom  they have a science experiment in which they mix together water, cornstarch and food coloring. Watch as they see what happens when the different materials and colors mix together.

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Preschool Science Experiment at Bright Horizons

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One of the ways we describe the study of science to small children is by saying we are “learning about the world and how it works.” But with a definition that broad it can sometimes be overwhelming to think of ideas for kindergarten science activities. Especially when you need those activities to entertain and educate a class of excited five-year-olds.

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Every day is chock-full of new discoveries when you are a kindergartner! These hands-on kindergarten science experiments and activities take advantage of kids' boundless curiosity. They'll learn about physics, biology, chemistry, and more basic science concepts, gearing them up to become lifelong learners.

(Just a heads up, WeAreTeachers may collect a share of sales from the links on this page. We only recommend items our team loves!)

1. Make a lava lamp

Help your students make their very own lava lamp using simple household ingredients. Then personalize the lamps by adding a couple of drops of food coloring to each bottle.

Learn more: Science Fun for Everyone

2. Create a tower of ice instantly

Place two water bottles in the freezer for a couple of hours, but don't let them freeze all the way through. Then, pour some of the water onto a couple of ice cubes perched on top of a ceramic bowl and watch a tower of ice form.

Learn more: Only Passionate Curiosity

3. Demonstrate the power of recycling

Teach your kindergartners how to transform something old into something new. Use scrap paper, old newspapers, and magazine pages to create beautiful handcrafted paper.

Learn more: The Craftaholic Witch

4. Make edible glass

Just like real glass, sugar glass is made from tiny opaque grains (of, in this case, sugar) that when molten and allowed to cool transforms into a special kind of substance called an amorphous solid.

Learn more: Go Science Kids

5. Make their hair stand on end

Learn all about the properties of static electricity with these three fun balloon experiments.

Learn more: MEL Chemistry

6. Create a model of the human spine

Kids love to learn through play. Make this simple egg carton spine model to encourage your students' interest in the human body and how it works.

Learn more: Mombrite

7. Inflate a balloon without blowing into it

Teach your students the magic of chemical reactions using a plastic bottle, vinegar, and baking soda to inflate a balloon.

Learn more: Hands On Teaching Ideas

8. Move a butterfly's wings with static electricity

Part art project, part science lesson, all fun! Kids make tissue paper butterflies, then use the static electricity from a balloon to flap the wings.

Learn more: I Heart Crafty Things

9. Use apples to learn what science is all about

This apple investigation is a great way to start. It encourages kids to examine an apple using a variety of techniques to learn its properties. Get a free printable worksheet for this activity at the link.

Learn more: Preschool Play & Learn

10. Paint with salt

OK, kindergartners probably won't remember the word "hygroscopic," but they'll enjoy watching the salt absorb and transfer colors in this neat experiment.

Learn more: A Dab of Glue Will Do

11. Play with "magic" milk

Sometimes science seems like magic! In this case, dish soap breaks down milk fats and causes a colorful swirling reaction that will mesmerize little learners.

Learn more: Natural Beach Living

12. Race balloon rockets

Introduce little ones to the laws of motion with easy-to-make balloon rockets. When the air shoots out one end, the balloons will sail off in the other direction. Whee!

Learn more: Hands On Teaching Ideas

13. Lift a bag with balloons

You'll need helium balloons for this one, and kids are gonna love it. Ask them to guess (hypothesize) how many balloons it will take to lift various items in a bag attached to the strings.

Learn more: Mess for Less

14. Discover how plants breathe

Kids might be surprised when you tell them that trees breathe. This experiment will help prove it's true.

Learn more: Edventures With Kids

15. Learn how germs spread

There's never been a better time to add a handwashing experiment to your list of kindergarten science activities. Use glitter as a stand-in for germs, and learn how important washing your hands with soap really is.

Learn more: Gift of Curiosity/Hand Washing

16. Explore the properties of mystery items

Mystery bags are always a hit with kids. Tuck a variety of objects inside, then encourage kids to feel, shake, smell, and explore as they try to determine what the items are without looking.

Learn more: Raising Lifelong Learners

17. Play with fizzing ice cubes

While kinders may not entirely understand the concept of acid-base reactions, they'll still get a kick out of spraying these baking soda ice cubes with lemon juice and watching them fizz away!

Learn more: The Play-Based Mom

18. Find out what sinks and what floats

Kids learn about the property of buoyancy and get some practice making predictions and recording the results with this easy experiment. All you need is a container of water to get started.

Learn more: Buggy and Buddy

19. Explore buoyancy with oranges

Expand your exploration of buoyancy with this cool demo. Kids will be surprised to learn that even though an orange feels heavy, it floats. That is, until you peel off the skin!

Learn more: Playdough to Plato

20. Sniff away at scent bottles

Here's another way to engage the senses. Drop essential oils onto cotton balls, then seal them inside spice bottles. Kids sniff the bottles and try to identify the smell.

Learn more: Things To Share and Remember

21. Play with magnets

Magnet play is one of our favorite kindergarten science activities. Place a variety of items into small bottles, and ask kids which ones they think will be attracted to the magnets. The answers may surprise them!

Learn more: Left Brain Craft Brain

22. Waterproof a boot

This experiment lets kindergartners try their hand at "waterproofing" a boot with a variety of materials. They use what they already know to predict which materials will protect the paper boot from water, then experiment to see if they're right.

Learn more: Science Sparks

23. Watch colored water walk

Fill three small jars with red, yellow, and blue food coloring and some water. Then place empty jars in between each. Fold paper towel strips and place them in the jars as shown. Kids will be amazed as the paper towels pull the water from full jars to empty ones, mixing and creating new colors!

Learn more: Messy Little Monster

24. Create a tornado in a jar

As you fill in the weather during daily calendar time, you might have a chance to talk about severe storms and tornadoes. Show your students how twisters form with this classic tornado jar experiment.

Learn more: One Little Project/Tornado in a Jar

25. Suspend water inside a jar

Lots of kindergarten science activities involve water, which is terrific because kids love to play in it! In this one, show your students how air pressure keeps water in a jar, even when it's upside down.

Learn more: A Mothership Down

26. Dig into some soil science

Ready to get your hands in the dirt? Scoop up some soil and examine it more closely, looking for rocks, seeds, worms, and other items.

Learn more: Go Science Kids/Backyard Science Experiment

27. See popcorn kernels dance

Here's an activity that always feels a bit like magic. Drop an Alka-Seltzer tablet into a glass of water with popcorn kernels, and watch as the bubbles cling to the kernels and make them rise and fall. So cool!

Learn more: Everyday Chaos and Calm

28. Mix up some Oobleck

Perhaps no book leads so perfectly into a science lesson as Dr. Seuss's Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Just what is oobleck? It's a non-Newtonian fluid, which looks like a liquid but takes on the properties of a solid when squeezed. Weird, messy ... and so much fun!

Learn more: ABCs of Literacy

29. Make it rain with shaving cream

Here's another neat weather-related science experiment. Make shaving cream "clouds" on top of the water, then drop food coloring in to watch it "rain."

Learn more: One Little Project/Shaving Cream Rain Clouds

30. Grow crystal letters

No list of kindergarten science activities would be complete without a crystal project! Use pipe cleaners to make the letters of the alphabet (numbers are good too), then grow crystals on them using a supersaturated solution.

Learn more: Gift of Curiosity/Crystallized Letters

31. Bend light with water

Light refraction produces some incredible results. Your students will think it's magic when the arrow on the paper changes direction ... until you explain that it's all due to the way water bends the light.

Learn more: Go Science Girls/Light Glass Water Play

32. Blow up your fingerprints

You don't need a microscope to look at fingerprints up close! Instead, have each student make a print on a balloon, then blow it up to see the whorls and ridges in detail.

Learn more: The Natural Homeschool

33. Bounce popcorn with sound waves

Sound may be invisible to the naked eye, but you can see the waves in action with this demo. The plastic wrap-covered bowl is the perfect stand-in for an eardrum.

Learn more: Premeditated Leftovers

34. Build a Three Little Pigs STEM house

Can your little engineers create a house that protects a little piggie from the big bad wolf? Try this STEM challenge and find out!

Learn more: Sweet Sounds of Kindergarten

35. Play a marble maze game

Tell kids they're going to move a marble without actually touching it, and watch their eyes widen in surprise! They'll have fun drawing mazes to guide a metal marble through with a magnet from beneath.

Learn more: Go Science Girls/Magnet Marble Maze

36. Germinate a seed

There's something about seeing a seed develop roots and shoots with your very eyes that's just so incredible. Sprout bean seeds in paper towels inside a glass jar to give it a try.

Learn more: How Wee Learn

37. Make egg geodes

Engage your students in the steps of the Scientific Method to create these stunning lab-grown geodes. Compare the results using sea salt, kosher salt, and borax.

Learn more: TinkerLab

38. Change the color of flowers

This is one of those classic kindergarten science activities everyone should try at least once. Learn how flowers "drink" water using capillary action, and create beautiful blooms while you're at it!

Learn more: Fun Learning for Kids

Plus, sign up for our newsletters to get all the latest teaching tips and ideas straight to your inbox!

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38 Fun and Free Kindergarten Science Activities for Budding Scientists

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Teach kindergarten science students to explore the world around them with these hands-on experiments, projects, and activities.

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Here are a couple of slideshows that they can use with their Physical Characteristics of Animals unit. They are super simple--meant to show kids the variety of animals in the world. They can show these slideshows to the kids AFTER they have explored and come up with a list of characteristics on their own--kind of a wrap up.

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Hello again! I know it's been a while since I've actually blogged, but I really have been doing some fun and exciting things in my classroom.

One of the favorite things I've been doing is Interactive Science Word Walls. I LOVE them! But I can't take credit for them. They are the brainchild of Dr. Julie Jackson, an associate professor at Texas State University. I've been lucky enough to work with Dr. Jackson for the past couple of years (and also lucky enough to have her grandsons in my class!)

So what are Interactive Science Word Walls? They are SO MUCH MORE than traditional word walls. Simply put--they are giant, colorful, engaging, hands-on, student-created graphic organizers! They help students develop a deep understanding of key science vocabulary.

Here are a few pictures of some of the word walls my kids and I have created. Over the coming months, I will detail some of the lessons that go with these walls. But in the meantime, here are a few important tips:

The word walls are not "front-loaded". In other words, I do not pre-make the word walls ahead of time and put them up at the beginning of my unit. They are made with my kids in the context of hands-on, inquiry-based science activities. Vocabulary is introduced as children are having concrete experiences that they can connect all those words to.

That does not mean that the walls should not be planned out. Know in advance what vocabulary you want the kids to learn (look to your standards for that). Think about how the vocabulary fits in to the objectives that you are teaching and create a graphic organizer that supports those objectives. Dr. Jackson has some really good planning documents on her website (The Science Toolkit) to help with this.

When possible, real-objects should be used on the walls. Real rocks, leaves, tools, etc! When not possible, pictures should be used (kind of hard to put the moon on your wall).

The kids should help as much as possible when creating these walls. In kindergarten, I start out doing most of the work, because I want the walls to be usable (let's face it--there's a lot of scribbling in the beginning of kinder). But even at the beginning of the year, I let the kids pick out the objects that will go with the words. As the year progresses, and the kids gain more writing and drawing skills, they do more of the work.

Use these word walls every day! Don't just put them up so they look pretty. Use the vocabulary in discussions, with sentence stems, writing and in science notebooks.

The word walls need to be accessible! In kinder, that means down low. Because wall space is at a premium in my classroom, I use rolling pocket charts for my walls. The kids are able to take the words out, use them to write, and put them back when they are finished.

I have been truly amazed at how well my kids learn science vocabulary since I started using Interactive Science Word Walls. I highly recommend a visit to Dr. Jackson's website, The Science Toolkit and her Facebook page for lots and lots of pictures and resources to help you build your own walls with your students.

Have fun!

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Hello again! I know it's been a while since I've actually blogged, but I really have been doing some fun and exciting things in my classroom. One of the favorite things I've been doing is Interactive Science Word Walls. I LOVE them! But I can't take credit for them.

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How young children learn English as another language

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How young children learn English as another language

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Young children are natural language acquirers; they are self-motivated to pick up language without conscious learning, unlike adolescents and adults.

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Introduction

Young children are natural language acquirers; they are self-motivated to pick up language without conscious learning, unlike adolescents and adults. They have the ability to imitate pronunciation and work out the rules for themselves. Any idea that learning to talk in English is difficult does not occur to them unless it's suggested by adults, who themselves probably learned English academically at a later age through grammar-based text books.

Read the notes below about young children learning English as another language. You can also download these notes as a booklet. Right-click on the link below to download the booklet to your computer. You may print this booklet.

The advantages of beginning early

Young children are still using their individual, innate language-learning strategies to acquire their home language and soon find they can also use these strategies to pick up English.

Young children have time to learn through play-like activities. They pick up language by taking part in an activity shared with an adult. They firstly make sense of the activity and then get meaning from the adult's shared language.

Young children have more time to fit English into the daily programme. School programmes tend to be informal and children's minds are not yet cluttered with facts to be stored and tested. They may have little or no homework and are less stressed by having to achieve set standards.

Children who have the opportunity to pick up a second language while they are still young appear to use the same innate language-learning strategies throughout life when learning other languages. Picking up third, fourth, or even more languages is easier than picking up a second.

Young children who acquire language rather than consciously learn it, as older children and adults have to, are more likely to have better pronunciation and feel for the language and culture. When monolingual children reach puberty and become more self-conscious, their ability to pick up language diminishes and they feel they have to consciously study English through grammar-based programmes. The age at which this change occurs depends greatly on the individual child's developmental levels as well as the expectations of their society.

Stages in picking up English

Spoken language comes naturally before reading and writing.

Silent period
When babies learn their home language, there is a 'silent period', when they look and listen and communicate through facial expression or gestures before they begin to speak. When young children learn English, there may be a similar 'silent period' when communication and understanding may take place before they actually speak any English words.

During this time parents should not force children to take part in spoken dialogue by making them repeat words. Spoken dialogues should be one-sided, the adult's talk providing useful opportunities for the child to pick up language. Where the adult uses parentese (an adjusted form of speech) to facilitate learning, the child may use many of the same strategies they used in learning their home language.

Beginning to talk
After some time, depending on the frequency of English sessions, each child (girls often more quickly than boys) begins to say single words ('cat', 'house') or ready-made short phrases ('What's that?', 'It's my book', 'I can't', 'That's a car', 'Time to go home') in dialogues or as unexpected statements. The child has memorised them, imitating the pronunciation exactly without realising that some may consist of more than one word. This stage continues for some time as they child picks up more language using it as a short cut to dialogue before they are ready to create their own phrases.

Building up English language
Gradually children build up phrases consisting of a single memorised word to which they add words from their vocabulary ('a dog', 'a brown dog', 'a brown and black dog') or a single memorised language to which they add their own input ('That's my chair', 'Time to play'). Depending on the frequency of exposure to English and the quality of experience, children gradually begin to create whole sentences.

Understanding

Understanding is always greater than speaking and young children's ability to comprehend should not be underestimated, as they are used to understanding their home language from a variety of context clues. Though they may not understand everything they hear in their home language, children grasp the gist - that is they understand a few important words and decipher the rest using different clues to interpret the meaning. With encouragement they soon transfer their 'gist' understanding skills to interpret meaning in English.

Frustration

After the initial novelty of English sessions, some young children become frustrated by their inability to express their thoughts in English. Others want to speak quickly in English as they can in their home language. Frustration can often be overcome by providing children with 'performance' pieces like 'I can count to 12 in English' or very simple rhymes, which consist of ready-made phrases.

Mistakes

Children should not be told they have made a mistake because any correction immediately demotivates. Mistakes may be part of the process of working out grammar rules of English or they may be a fault in pronunciation. 'I goed' soon becomes 'went' if the child hears the adult repeat back 'yes, you went'; or if the adult hears 'zee bus' and repeats 'the bus'. As in learning their home language, if children have an opportunity to hear the adult repeat the same piece of language correctly, they will self-correct in their own time.

Gender differences

Boys' brains develop differently from girls' and this affects how boys pick up language and use it. Sometimes mixed classes make little provision for boys, who may be overshadowed by girls' natural ability to use language. If young boys are to reach their potential, they need some different language experiences with girls and their achievements should not be compared with those of girls.

Language-learning environments

Young children find it more difficult to pick up English if they are not provided with the right type of experiences, accompanied by adult support using 'parentese' techniques.

Young children need to feel secure and know that there is some obvious reason for using English.

Activities need to be linked to some interesting everyday activities about which they already know, eg sharing an English picture book, saying a rhyme in English, having an 'English' snack.

Activities are accompanied by adult language giving a running commentary about what is going on and dialogues using adjusted parentese language.

English sessions are fun and interesting, concentrating on concepts children have already understood in their home language. In this way children are not learning two things, a new concept as well as new language, but merely learning the English to talk about something they already know.

Activities are backed up by specific objects, where possible, as this helps understanding and increases general interest.

Reading

Children who can already read in their home language generally want to find out how to read in English. They already know how to decode words in their home language to get meaning from text and, if not helped to decode in English, may transfer their home language-decoding techniques and end up reading English with the home language accent.

Before they can decode English, young children need to know the 26 alphabet letter names and sounds. As English has 26 letters but on average 44 sounds (in standard English), introducing the remaining sounds is better left until children have more experience in using language and reading,

Beginning reading in English goes easily if young children already know the language they are trying to read. Many children work out by themselves how to read in English if they have shared picture books with adults or learned rhymes, as they are likely to have memorised the language. Reading what they know by heart is an important step in learning to read as it gives children opportunities to work out how to decode simple words by themselves. Once children have built up a bank of words they can read, they feel confident and are then ready for a more structured approach.

Parental support

Children need to feel that they are making progress. They need continual encouragement as well as praise for good performance, as any success motivates. Parents are in an ideal position to motivate and so help their children learn, even if they have only basic English themselves and are learning alongside their young children.

By sharing, parents can not only bring their child's language and activities into family life, but can also influence their young children's attitudes to language learning and other cultures. It is now generally accepted that most lifelong attitudes are formed by the age of eight or nine.

Further reading:

If you are interested in finding out more about how children learn languages we suggest the following websites:

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How young children learn English as another language

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By Opal Dunn, educational consultant and author Introduction Young children are natural language acquirers; they are self-motivated to pick up language without conscious learning, unlike adolescents and adults. They have the ability to imitate pronunciation and work out the rules for themselves.

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The goal of kindergarten math curriculum is to prepare children for first grade math. Please see below a list of objectives and goals for kindergarten math

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Kindergarten math - its main goals and recommended curriculum & workbooks

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The main goals of kindergarten math explained, including lots of free ideas, usage of a 100-bead abacus, and recommended workbooks .