Koala Snack ball experiment...

This is an 'experiment' Ebi-kun saw on a TV program, I wasn't actually watching so I'm not sure how it all came about. He pestered me all week to try it, so I caved and we did...

First we had to buy a pack of コアラのマーチ - which is a koala shaped snack, it is crispy on the outside and soft chocolate in the middle, they are quite nice as they are....

Then you place all the snack into a jar, put on the lid and shake the jar for about 20 minutes...

It was quite interesting seeing the different stages of smashed up snack. Eventually it turns it a lump of chocolate crunch. We both decided it tasted better eaten before they are smashed up but at least you burn off some calories before eating it if you do the jar shaking idea!

Have you got any good food experiments to share?

Water - Action Pack - Win A Copy

As you know I am an Action Pack fan and this year Kathreen has changed it up a bit. She is currently taking a year and travelling/camping around Australia with her family and still managing to pull together the Action pack magazine.  This time round she is doing 4 bigger bumper magazines spaced over the year, the first one this year being Water AND, I am a contributor - whoo-hoo.

Action Pack Water

There are lots of great experiments & activities to get stuck into, the age range is 7-12 but I think younger kids can enjoy many of the experiments even if they don't understand the science behind it yet or you can work together on an activity rather than letting the child do it independently, like an older child would do.

Of course, it is all beautifully and clearly laid out and this edition includes activities from making a water rocket to surface tension to water crackers to density towers, plus puzzles and quizzes and there are some great contributors to boot.

We explored density towers which was as much fun for me as it was ebi-kun and we followed it up with some of his own experiments, that is one of the things I love about kitchen science, follow up experiments can easily be done without any worry of setting of some kind of dangerous chemical reaction (chemistry was not a strong subject for me at school)! 

Click HERE to buy your copy now - it is an instant download, there is also a freebie included on that page and/or pop your name in the box below to win a copy.

Just enter your name and email address to win, the winner will be chosen by random generator at 9am JST March 7th.

Dancing Raisins Experiment

This was a fun experiment, I remember doing it years ago but Ebi-kun doesn't remember at all and of course his understanding of the world is much great now he is older, so the whole experiment was like a new take on it all.

What you need:

4 clear glasses

Soda water and 3 other liquids, we used milk, tap water and vinegar

Food colour to distinguish the liquids 

12 raisins

Pieces of paper & a pencil

Baking soda*

1. Fill each glass about 3/4 full with each of the liquids, leave the soda water until you are about to do it in the experiment.

2. Label each glass with it's contents.

3. Ask the child to predict what will happen when they put a raisin the glass (they will probably just say sink or float). Write the prediction on the name cards.

4. Ask the child why each glass has three raisins. The reason is that you want to introduce the idea that scientific research is tested several times to cross out any flukes or accidents. You can ask what will happen if the first raisin in the water sinks and the second one floats? Does this mean raisins sink or float in water?

5. One glass at a time (leave the soda until last) drop in the raisins and note the result, was the prediction from the start right or wrong? What happened with the soda water? And Why?

The bubbles attach themselves to the raisins, which causes the raisin to float, when it hits the surface, the bubbles pop so the raisin sinks again, this will repeat until the soda goes flat.

***NOTE: If the soda water is not very fizzy, add some baking soda to get more bubbles in there. If you want to get messy try mixing the vinegar and soda, do it on a tray or in the sink though.

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7 fun weather experiments to do at home

Remember a couple of weeks ago I posted about the thunderstorm experiment? We I have put all the other experiment sheets together into one PDF, 7 in all. They are all easy, fun and use things that you have at home. You need to pop over to My Organized Chaos to download them (I can store the files myself over there).

If you think you know someone who would enjoy doing this with their kids then please share using Facebook, twitter, smoke signals...

How colouring mixing can teach patience...

I think we now live in a time where we expect instant results to everything, we expect instant replies to emails and text messages and we often choose quick fixes over working at something over a period of time. So when it come to doing craft and projects with Ebi-kun, I like to throw in some patience testing projects.

This one I totally stole from Chasing Cheerios and although it was a slow project, it was fun.

What you need:

6 glasses

Red, blue and yellow food colour (I used Wilton gel)

Water in a jug

Something to mix with

6 sheets of kitchen paper

Pour water into the 6 glasses, the three that will be plain water need less than the coloured water, took me a while to future that out!

Add colour to three of the glasses so you have a red, a yellow and a blue glass and mix well. Then place the glasses in a ring as shown below.

Fold the kitchen paper in half then half again to make a long strip. Link each glass with a strip of kitchen paper to make a ring.

Sit and watch. This was about an hour after we put it together in the morning....

This was dinner time, as you can see the colour hadn't moved much. That is when I realised that the plain water glasses should have less water in them, so I removed a bit of the water.

This was the following morning, Ebi-kun was the first downstairs, I could here him shouting 'it worked'. Not only had the colors travelled along the kitchen paper it had also mixed in the plain water glasses, so they were now purple, orange and green.

We wondered what to do with the kitchen paper, we decided to put it on a big sheet of paper to dry.

Which gave us even more beautiful results! Now I am wishing I had used a piece of fabric instead!

And the kitchen paper... we scrunched them up to make pretty roses....

Ebi-kun is now old enough to predict and deduce results but he was still surprised when he saw the secondary colours in the glasses, I must admit, I enjoyed doing this too!

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