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)