Foaming Names & More Fun Science Activities

Oh how we love fun science activities around here! So I’m excited to share a new book that encourages that love of science (along with some activities to try, of course).

so many fun science activities for kids

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Asia Citro’s new book, The Curious Kid’s Science Book: 100+ Creative Hands-On Activities for Ages 4-8, is chock full of engaging science activities for the kiddos. What I love the most about it is that it encourages children to ask questions, experiment, and problem solve. Since the science activities are open-ended, they can easily be adjusted to suit different ages.

Engineer was really excited to read through the book, and he helped me settle on which experiment to try first. We’ve been experimenting with baking soda and vinegar for years, so I wasn’t surprised when he chose something along those lines. Specifically, we decided to test whether frozen baking soda reacts with vinegar differently than room temperature baking soda.

We had fun coloring baking soda with liquid watercolors, freezing a sample, then testing the frozen sample with the one at room temperature. We ended up doing it a few times, with different colors and such. This led to a discussion about our icy fizzy letter experiment from a couple of years ago. Which led to another experiment, of course! We decided to try a spin on our icy letters, based on additional inspiration from Asia’s Magic Foaming Treasure Stars. Thus, our foaming names were born.

Materials we used
Glitter liquid watercolors (care of Discount School Supply)
Silicone letter trays
Baking soda
Vinegar

Our experiment
We mixed up a few batches of colorful baking soda dough, using Asia’s recipe. The only change we made was adding an additional teaspoon of liquid watercolors. Everything went into the letter trays, and we let them freeze for a few hours.

Then we place the letters in the vinegar mixture and watched as they foamed! Engineer and I were so excited to see the colorful foam coming out from the letters. The yellow didn’t show up too well in the foam, but the other colors were gorgeous! I loved hearing Engineer’s play-by-play of the process. He didn’t even want to mix up the foam until most of the letters were covered.

I’m absolutely positive that I’ll be referencing The Curious Kid’s Science Book many times in the near future. The fun science activities are sure to continue engaging my son, and I can’t wait to try some of the ideas with my preschool class! What science activities are your kids’ favorites?