Science fun and games

Creating his own little experiment here

(This post contains affiliate links)

We have had so much fun with science over the past two weeks that I wanted to compile a collection so you can find everything in one place. We have carried out several experiments, baked and played and will be repeating many of these activities again soon.


First off, bouncing eggs! These are simple to do but take a while to prepare. Our eldest son is able to prepare and wait overnight to finish an experiment while the youngest is still too eager to manage the waiting part. So, when I have to prepare things a day ahead I try to do so when the youngest takes a nap otherwise he becomes distressed that he cannot do the activity immediately. He will grow and learn just as his brother has but for now, we do the prep without him! See our eggs bouncing on YouTube (includes full instructions).

Tornado in a bottle

Next up is 'Tornado in a bottle'. This was so easy and quick to set up and we have done it several times. See ours in action here (includes full instructions).

Floating egg

Another quick and easy experiment was making an egg float. We began with a small basin of water (enough to cover an egg) and placed the egg in. It sank. We then added sea salt to see how much was needed to make the egg float. The boys measured out and counted and after 30 teaspoons the egg finally floated!

Black light drawing

We have had lots of fun with glow in the dark drawing all you need is a black light and some UV pens (affiliate link below - this is the first set we got).

Homemade chalk

We also had a go at making our own chalk. This was lots of messy fun but pretty simple and the boys were able to do a great deal on their own. We used plaster of paris and paint, mixed it up and put it in homemade molds to set. It only took an hour or so in the sun and then it was chalk drawings everywhere! 

Fruit engineering

A simple engineering activity we created involved tooth picks and fruit. The boys had melon to make interesting shapes. They had a feast at the same time! This has been repeated nearly every day and they have tried mango, apple, peas, corn and banana! 

The last item I will show you is something I made for the boys which has been used a lot and a great way to start learning about the body. It is a felt torso with 10 detachable parts and I have made a work sheet with facts about each body part which is available on request - just message us with your email address and we'll get a free copy to you asap request sheet here

How do I do housework with two small boys? Our life in photos

I often get asked how I manage to clean the house with the boys underfoot! I thought i'd share some of the methods I've used lately. 

Colouring in the book corner while mummy mops the floor

Digging in the garden while daddy hangs out the washing

Getting the hang of vacuuming while daddy washes the dishes 

Spraying the mirror while mummy cleans the windows

Wiping the mirror while mummy dries the dishes

Playing in the bath while daddy cleans the loo

These are just a few of the ways I get everything done in a peaceful manner and getting them involved with daily chores. We are always on the look out for new ideas, so if you have a great way to get the kids busy so you can get busy, please comment below :)

Here are a few ideas to get the little ones busy (affiliate links for readers convenience).

British Science Week

British science week (BSW) is just a few days away so we have been preparing to have some science fun and learn something along the way.

This year BSW falls on 11-20 March 2016. There is a a great website to check out which has free activities for kids of all ages.

Both boys here just love experiments so we shall be carrying out a few of our favorite this month. One of the best ingredients to have around is bicarbonate of soda. Its quite safe and can be used in several ways to make fizzy experiments. A few of our favorites include: 

• A tray with a layer of bicarbonate of soda, small pots with vinegar and different food colouring in each, droppers, when the coloured vinegar is dropped onto the bicarbonate of soda it causes a huge fizz of bubbles!
• Make cornflour paints that fizz. Mix 1/3 part cornflour with 1/3 part bicarbonate of soda with 1/3 water and a couple of drops of food colouring. Let the kids paint the pavement or garden walls, then once its dry, give them a spray bottle with vinegar and watch the paint fizz when they spray it.
• volcanoes: these are an absolute favorite in our house. The boys like to make clay volcanoes and add bicarbonate of soda, red and yellow food colouring and a drop of washing up liquid, then pour in vinegar to watch the 'erruption'. Normally the plastic dinosaurs get involved too!!! 

Other ideas for science week include floating and sinking activities mainly because both my guys LOVE water. I try to do an outside version of this where they can gather sticks, leaves, stones or anything they can find in the garden or on a walk and we test if they float or sink in the paddling pool or basin of water. The indoor version involves getting a selection of their (waterproof) toys and seeing if they float or sink in the bath. We make it more interesting by adding food colouring or bubbles. Or try to see how many items you can balance on a sheet of paper or card before it sinks. Or make a small paper boat to balance items on.

Another activity we are going to try is the power of gravity. I will get them to collect heavy and light objects and we will compare how they fall to the ground. I would like to use a stopwatch for these activities to give them a sense of time and get my eldest even more focused on the concept of seconds!

We will also have a bug hunt. We have a handy microscope that they like to use in the garden so we can use it to look at bugs or their homes as well as the patterns on leaves, grass or flowers and basically anything else they find in the garden! 

The final experiment I will talk about here is one to test lung capacity.
You will need an empty plastic bottle, a tube to blow through and a basin of water. Fill the plastic bottle up to the top and place your hand over the top. Submerge it upside down under the water in the basin then carefully place the tube inside. When it's all set up let your child blow into the tube. The air will push out the water and you will see how big their lung capacity is! We had a competition to see who could get all the water out of the plastic bottle!!! Watch the video here.

Some of our resources for science week (affiliate links)

Learning to read

Learning to read is a process which begins early on. Without even realizing, we start this process when we read to our babies, showing them the books and pictures. Going from here to independent reading takes many years but the more stimulus you provide the more apt your child will become.

Our eldest son began reading sight words and short sentences a couple of months before his fourth birthday. He has now (at 4.1years) started sounding out the words phonetically. So, how did we get to this point?

We have used several methods combined to make this learning process lots of fun. First we started sight words. These are high frequency words that can be learnt without sounding them out phonetically (a list of our first sight words can be found at the bottom of this post). Watch a video of me presenting sight words to our youngest son here. We do this once or twice a day until they are confident with the words, then we move onto another few. When they have learnt around 20 words we start setting up three word sentences such as "I like you" or "He is happy".

The next step is learning to sound out other words phonetically. For this we enlisted the help of the alphablocks! We found many videos on YouTube and both boys really enjoyed learning the sounds of the letters through these characters. Once they had a handle on this I chose a few starter readers for them to begin reading. With the combination of sight words and phonetically sounding out other words our eldest son can read simple sentences and get to the end of a simple book.

Another great resource we have used is oxfordowl.co.uk. There are suggested methods on helping your child to read and there is a whole collection of Ebooks you can listen to or read online. Every week my sons choose a book to read and we go through it together. They look so proud when they can read a sentence or sound out a word and it is the beginning of a lifetime of reading.

It helps too, that our boys see us reading often. We have a space for them to take books and read alone or ask us to read to them. Both me and my husband enjoy reading and hope to share this with our boys.

List of sight words
I                    Not                    Did
A                   Are                    Have
Can               More                  The
We                It                         In
Like              Is                        Run
You               See                     To
No                Big                      Happy
Yes               Up                       Some

Here are a few ideas of products which can help with sight words (affiliate links)

Sight word Bingo

Sight word fridge magnets

Alphablocks DVD