Topic: Swimming Spaghetti (Make spaghetti do tricks with this fun and fizzy experiment.)

Supplies:

Uncooked spaghetti

1 cup of water

2 teaspoons of baking soda

5 teaspoons of vinegar

Tall clear glass

Steps:

1.  Put water and baking soda in the glass.

2.  Stir until the baking soda is dissolved.

3.  Break spaghetti into 1-inch pieces.

4.  Put about 6 pieces in the glass. They will sink to the bottom.

5.  Add vinegar to the mixture in the glass. Observe what happens to the pieces of spaghetti.

6.  Add more vinegar as the action starts to slow down.

Science Lesson:

When baking soda and vinegar are mixed together, a chemical reaction occurs. It produces a gas called carbon dioxide, which forms lots of bubbles on top of the mixture and smaller bubbles at the bottom of the glass. These little bubbles stick to the spaghetti and make it float to the surface, just as you do when you sit on a swimming pool noodle! When the spaghetti reaches the surface, the bubbles pop and the spaghetti sinks to the bottom.

Topic: Milk Painting

Supplies:

Milk 

Dish soap

Q-tips

Food coloring

Shallow plate or wide bowls
 

Steps:

1.  Fill a plate or bowl with milk.

2.  Drop in at least 2 drops of each of four colors of food coloring. The more variety of colors the cooler the painting.

3.  Generously dip the end of a q-tip in dish soap.

4.  Now dip the q-tip into the milk next to a drop of color.

5.  The first thing that will happen is the color will burst as soon as the dish soap hits it. It’s a great effect but very short lived. Once there is a little dishsoap in the milk it no longer “bursts”.

6.  Gently swirl the q-tip through the different colors and you’ll see little rivers of color start to form.

7.  Continue until the colors begin to mix and become brown. Empty your plate/bowl and repeat.

For a variation we premixed the milk and dish soap. You won’t have the color burst effect but it does seem to keep the colors separate a little longer.  Another fun thing we tried was dipping a piece of watercolor paper in the milk mixture to capture the milk design. It actually worked!

Topic: Rope Climbing Toy

Supplies

Heavy duty card stock or thin cardboard

Tape

Straws- cut into 1 inch lengths

A coin

String

Beads

Hot glue

Steps:

1.  Trace and cut your shape out of the cardboard. 

2.  Turn the shape over and tape two lengths of straws and a coin to the back of the shape.

3.  Thread a roughly 2- 1/2 foot length of string through the straws. 

4.  Tie beads onto the end of each piece of string. Secure in place with a dab of hot glue.

5.  Go hang the toy on a doorknob and pull the strings away from each other. The figure will “climb” the rope. 

Note: This is a bit of a fragile toy! If you have a child with a lot of “strength” you may want to use thick string and heavy duty tape.