Showing posts with label science activities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science activities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science activities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science activities. Show all posts

Visit Telescope Indiana: IU Link Observatory

Homeschool Science Field Trip: Visit the Link Telescope


If you are looking for something different to do in Indiana, visit the IU Link Observatory Telescope between Mooresville and Martinsville, Indiana. It's a one tank trip from most places in Indiana, and it makes a great homeschool science field trip. Psst... It's not just for homeschoolers and science junkies. Architects, historians, and gardeners will love it too! Keep reading to find out why.





The Link Observatory is a magnificent piece of architecture in a beautiful setting. It sits atop a hill adjacent to a Daffodil garden. Completed in 1939, for Dr. Goethe Link, the domed structure is made of local wood from the property. The dome swivels for a panoramic view of the night sky. Until the 1980's the observatory was used for astronomical research. However, as the the city lights of Indianapolis grew, it made star viewing increasingly difficult.





The adjacent Daffodil garden is the perfect setting for a family picnic, to catch up on reading, to walk your dog, or to paint the gorgeous landscape. The day we visited, an artist was painting a lovely watercolor painting of the dome.







And this happened in 2018, Indiana native, David Wolf, electrical engineer, medical doctor, and astronaut, joined the Link Observatory Space Science Institute staff as Chief Science Officer. Dr. Wolf works with the Institute on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) educational programming, public engagement, and fundraising.






Link live events take place at area libraries. You can also invite them to do a program at your school, camp, or other event. Check the Link Telescope Event Calendar for activities at the observatory and within the surrounding communities. The Link Observatory is free to the public on the 1st Saturday of each month for night sky viewing and the 2nd Thursday of each month from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm for daytime tours of the telescope and facility.


















We visited on a free Thursday. The docent was full of fun facts, science humor, and shared the interesting history of the observatory. It seems Mrs. Goethe planted and cultivated the Daffodils. There are several different species, still blooming after all of these years. 


Tips for your Visit:

Don't expect anyone to greet you at the door. Just walk in and head up the steps to see the telescope.

If you visit during the day, pack a picnic lunch. You can tour the facility in under 20 minutes, but be sure to let the guide share the telescope's history with you. We even got a demonstration of the dome pivoting around its track.

When you're done, head over to Martinsville to visit the Martinsville Candy Kitchen or the Martinsville Farmer's Market.



Recommended:

Indiana: Between Camby and Moorseville on State Rd. 67 visit the Dr. Who Store and Museum

For more one tank trips and family friendly vacation ideas follow us on Instagram or check out our  Things to Do on Vacation page.

Click here to find some cool kids telescopes.



Plant and Animal Cell Lesson with Pizza Project


Pizza Plant and Animal Cell Lesson Plan


Plant and Animal Cell Lesson: Got a homeschooler Studying Biology? Hungry? Here's a fun way to learn the parts of a cell and prep lunch at the same time. Make a PLANT CELL PIZZA project. This can also be used as classroom or science fair or 4H project. We've included links to companion worksheets and learning packs. Enjoy!

 Post contains affiliate links.

Plant and Animal Cell Lesson with Pizza Project
Animal and Plant Cell Lesson Plan and Pizza Project.

We saw this plant cell pizza project at the world's best Children's Museum in Indianapolis. 

Companion Lesson Activity: Label Plant Cell Worksheet

Encouraging Moms at Home offers a great FREE Plant and Animal Cell Printable learning pack with great worksheets that include a Venn diagram and awesome charts. After clicking the link above, scroll to the bottom of their page for your free plant and animal pack download. (Recommended for 4-6 grade, but we think older kids can benefit from it too.)

Learn about Animal Cells vs. Plant Cells





How to Make a PLANT and ANIMAL CELL Pizza


The museum's program made a pizza and used different ingredients to represent the parts of the cell. We decided to make one pizza to represent an animal cell and another pizza to represent a plant cell. You can use any ingredients you choose as long as you decide ahead of time what ingredient is what cell part. 

Don't like those options for your pizza toppings? That's okay, just remove the yucky ones before eating!

Don't know what the parts of a cell represent? Get details here: What are the parts of a cell? You can also scroll down and learn about them in our ingredient list.

You can use the following items to represent the parts of a cell.


Cytoplasm: Use sauce for your cytoplasm.
Nucleus: Large and round, use a slice of tomato, avocado, or salami.
Ribosomes: Small and colorful, use riced broccoli, diced green onions, bacon bits, or shredded carrots. Sprinkle around the cell.
Mitochondria: Black, italian sausage ground beef, olive slices, black beans 
Golgi Bodies: Use red or green peppers, pineapple, or carrot swirls.
Endoplasmic Reticulum: Use sliced of mushrooms or peppers.
Vacuole: Can be anything or nothing! Push a whole in your dough.
Chloroplasts: Only for plant cells. Use anything green: green peppers, green olives, or green onions.
Membrane and Cell Wall: Form a wall with sea salt, herbs, (basil or oregano) or cheese.
We used the following:


Label parts of cell with pizza toppings



  • 2 premade pizza crusts - Boboli works great!
  • Pizza sauce - cytoplasm. The jelly-like substance that suspends the cell organelles
  • Mozzarella cheese - cell membrane. The membrane that surrounds the cell and controls what substances enter and leave the cell.
  • Cheddar cheese - cell wall. A rigid structure on the outside of plant cells.
  • Tomato slice - nucleus.  The part of the cell containing the DNA.
  • Italian Seasoning - ribosomes. Organelles responsible for protein manufacture.
  • Mushrooms - mitochondria. Organelles responsible for converting nutrients to energy (respiration).
  • Sliced red pepper - golgi body. Organelle which stores, modifies, and transports proteins and lipids.
  • Pepperoni - endoplasmic reticuli. Organelles which perform several tasks within the cell. Rough ER and dotted with ribosomes, while smooth ER are not.  
  • Ham - vacuoles. Fluid-filled cavity within the cell serving a variety of purposes. The central vacuole of a plant cell maintains its pressure and keeps it rigid.
  • Sausage - lysosomes. Organelles found in animal cells that break down nutrients into smaller pieces (digestion).
  • Black olives - leucoplasts. Plant cell organelles that store starches and oils.
  • Green olives - chloroplasts. Plant cell organelles that contain pigments for photosynthesis. 
  • Celery - centriole. Animal cell organelles that aid in cell mitosis.

Bake on pizza pan according to package directions or 400 degrees until cheese melts. About 12 minutes.


Pizza Plant and Animal Cell Lesson Plan


Vegetarian? Make your plant cell vegetarian. 
Squash slices could replace pepperoni. 
Onion slices could replace sausage.

Want to get Creative?
Use kitchen shears to cut your ingredients into shapes to match those in your biology book or the lesson links mentioned above.


fun way to learn the parts of a cell


Have younger family members? Grab some white paper and make placemats showing the parts of the cell based on the page from your biology text or the videos and worksheets above.

Watch the process of making animal and plant cell pizzas on YouTube.





Recommended:

More online Science Lesson Plans 

Learn about Stalactites and Stalagmites


Pin it!

homeschool Plant and Animal Cell Lesson with Pizza Project





Recycle Wax Candle Science Fair: Babybel Wrappers

Science Fair Project: Make Candles from Recycled Wax

Need an idea for a school science experiment worthy of the Science Fair? This recycled wax project makes a cool 4H project too. If you like to tinker and experiment with different ways of doing the same old thing, recycle wax from Babybel Cheese wrappers into candles! Just imagine- the power goes out and you've got plenty of cheese, but no candles. No worries. We've got you covered. You can make candles from scratch at home. Enjoy!



Recycle Wax Candle Science Fair: Babybel Wrappers Experiment


This post contains affiliate links.


Planet Study: Mars

Learn about Mars with Online Lessons and Worksheets

Mars. The planet all ages love. Is there the possibility of life on Mars? Will you have the opportunity to live on mars? In this Mars Planet Study, we've compiled a series of online lessons and activities for kids from preschool to high school. Enjoy!

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.


Planet Study: Mars Lesson Homeschool


How to Make a Battery Magnet: Solenoid Science

How to Make a Magnet with a Battery Wire and Nail

If you are looking for a fun and slightly dangerous science experiment for your class or homeschool, you've come to the right place! Depending on how you attempt to make a battery magnet with a wire and a nail, this solenoid science project for kids can be a lot of fun or go very wrong. Perfect, now your kids will pay attention. Enjoy!


This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.*

How to Make a Battery Magnet: Solenoid Science


Science Online Activities: Lessons and Games

Homeschool Science Ideas for Projects, Experiments, and Lessons


Whether you are looking for Homeschool Science Fair Projects or Ideas for Experiments these online science lessons and curriculum are perfect for classroom or homeschoolers. We gather the best games, videos, printables, and science curriculum so you don't have to. Enjoy! 


This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

Homeschool Science Online Activities: Lessons, Projects, and Games
Homeschool Science Online Activities: Lessons and Games.


Homeschool Science Projects, Experiments, and Lesson Ideas:



Recommended:




3 Science Things to do with Eggs: Includes Bouncing Egg

3 Fun Science Things to do with Eggs including Bouncing Egg

We've got chickens and ducks, so we've got a lot of eggs! We're always looking for new uses for them. We don't want them to go to waste. Since we homeschool, we decided to try some kid science things to do with eggs. Have you seen the bouncing egg experiment? So, how do you make an egg bounceEnjoy!

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience*

Kids Science Egg Experiments Rubber Bouncing Eggs
Which came first the chicken or the egg? Oh, that's not the egg science experiment we're doing..


EXPERIMENT #1

For our first egg science experiment, we tried to find out. Will it float? You'll need two eggs and two glasses of tap water.


Bouncing Egg Experiment with Results
Bouncing Egg Experiment with Results.

Drop one egg in each glass.

Do they float? Why or why not? Write down your hypothesis in your journal or a Google Doc.

Slowly add SEA SALT (table salt works, you just need more). Now, what happens? The more sea salt you add what happens?

To find out what is happening, click here: Results.

That was fun! Don't waste those eggs. Keep them for the next experiment! Leave your egg in the cup.

Add enough vinegar to cover the egg.

Check it after 24 hours. Record any changes in the egg in your Science Journal or a Google Doc.


EXPERIMENT #2

Can you make an egg bounce?


http://www.planet-science.com/categories/experiments/messy/2011/02/can-you-make-an-egg-bounce.aspx
Can you make an egg bounce?

Instructions for the next experiment call for a boiled egg, but we tried it with an unboiled egg- Just to be different.

We used a chicken egg and a duck egg. Since the duck egg has a stronger shell, the results were much better.

You can try it with boiled an unboiled eggs, but remember to test it outside. Do an experiment with both types of eggs and record any differences or similarities that you find.

How is the duck egg different from the chicken egg?

So, how does the egg feel after 24 hrs.? 48 hrs.? 72 hrs.?

We tested our egg after 48 hrs. See the results below.


VIDEO: Unboiled Egg Test Results

Here are ten more cool egg science experiments to try.

EXPERIMENT #3

Easter Egg Dye Experiments


What else can you do with eggs? Of course, we dye them for Easter. You might want to try to dye your Easter eggs naturally. We tried it as a Science Experiment. Let me just say, we failed miserably. One reason is we neglected to follow all of the steps.


Natural egg colors: How to dye eggs naturally.
Duck and chicken eggs from our farm. Use a Sharpie to write the date of collection.

If you want to dye eggs naturally click the links below to follow the instructions, and use these all natural ingredients that are proven to work.

Red Cabbage Eggs

Yellow Tumeric Eggs

We tried Dandelions...


Can you dye eggs with Dandelions
Can you dye eggs with Dandelions? Maybe.

We tried Violets and other purple wildflowers...


Can you dye eggs with Violets? Maybe...

Soaking an egg in Violet juice.

Can you dye an egg with Halloween Candy?


Dye eggs with old Halloween Candy.
Dye eggs with old Halloween Candy.

Heat the candy slowly over low heat. Green candies turn into a brown, sugary goo.


Orange and Red candies turn into an orange goo. Guess what? It works, sort of...

Beautiful natural shades of our eggs.


Egg soaked in melted orange and red candy.

The results of our egg-periment. For us, only orange and red candy worked.



Recommended:

Free Homeschooling Lessons

Cool Science Experiments Books*


















ADS DISCLOSURE: We've partnered with some wonderful advertisers who may sponsor blog posts or send us samples to test. Some companies pay us to review their products.

*We also use affiliate links, if you make a purchase we get a tiny commission. Kids Creative Chaos participates in the Amazon LLC Associates Program*, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a mean for blogs to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon properties, including, but not limited to, amazon.com, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com. We also offer Tapinfluence, Google Adsense, SoFab, and Izea ads here. Thanks so much for helping us keep the lights on! :)


Albert Einstein Video and Lesson Plans for Kids

Einstein Online Lessons and Science Projects

You've probably heard of Albert Einstein. For sure, you've seen his iconic image. You know he was smart, but the true facts about Einstein will likely surprise you. Learn all about the most famous scientist in history with these Albert Einstein videos, lessons, and science project experiments for kids. We also found a Quantum Physics mod for Minecraft. Oh, yes we did. Enjoy!


Albert Einstein Video and Lesson Plans for Kids
Albert Einstein Video and Lesson Plans for Kids.


Did you know the 99th element, discovered after Einstein's death, is called Einsteinium? Learn more about it here: Albert Einstein Biography

You can learn about Albert Einstein by reading this fun book about the scientist, I am Albert Einstein, by Brad Meltzer. Scroll down to get the book through our affiliate link*.


I am Albert Einstein by Brad Meltzer.
I am Albert Einstein by Brad Meltzer.


Facts about Albert Einstein








Fun Cartoon about Albert Einstein from Brainpop.

Albert Einstein cartoon video for kids from Brainpop.
Albert Einstein cartoon video for kids from Brainpop.


Einstein Lesson Plans for Teachers.


Definition of Quantum Physics for Kids


Albert Einstein Mask Craft coming soon.



Quantum Physics Mod for Minecraft

Download qCraft Quantum Physics Mod for Minecraft







Albert Einstein coloring page with glasses.
Albert Einstein coloring page with glasses.






Science Projects:

How to Make an Electric Motor

Learn how to make an Electric Motor.
Learn how to make an Electric Motor from Education.com.



States of Matter for Kids



Learn How to Stack Liquids: Rainbow in a Jar from Steve Spangler.


Rainbow Stacking Liquids Science Experiment from Steve Spangler Science.
Rainbow Stacking Liquids Science Experiment from Steve Spangler Science.



Recommended:

The Science of Matter

I am Albert Einstein*

Electric Circuit Lesson

Universe Lesson











ADS DISCLOSURE: We've partnered with some wonderful advertisers who may sponsor blog posts or send us samples to test. Some companies pay us to review their products. *We also use affiliate links, if you make a purchase we get a tiny commission. Kids Creative Chaos participates in the Amazon LLC Associates Program*, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a mean for blogs to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon properties, including, but not limited to, amazon.com, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com. We also offer Tapinfluence, Google Adsense, SoFab, and Izea ads here. Thanks so much for helping us keep the lights on! :)


Circuit Lessons for Elementary and Middle School

Elementary and Middle School Electric Circuit Science Lesson

What's more fun than making stuff work? These circuit lessons for elementary and middle school students are fun to make. We've included printable PDF worksheets for electricity and lesson plans for teachers from PBS and Duke Energy. There is also a free online circuit lesson from Brainpop. Scroll down to get your own Circuit Building Kit. Enjoy!

This post includes affiliate links for your convenience.*


Circuit Lessons for Elementary and Middle School
Circuit Lessons for Elementary and Middle School.


For Students:


Free Video on Electric Circuits from Brainpop.com. Be sure to play the game, take the quiz, and read the FYI. Then, do the Label It exercise.


See the Simple Explanation of an Electrical Circuit:







The video below is great for older students. It explains current from an automotive perspective:





The following video is a cartoon targeting younger elementary students:






Elementary and Middle School Electric Circuit Science Lesson

Elementary and Middle School Electric Circuit Science Lesson.




Series and Parallel Circuits:





Here's the Online Circuit Interactive Activity he talks about in the video above, give it a try! You can download it here: Circuit Kit Activity.



Circuit Construction Kit (DC Only)
Click to Run









Just for Fun watch this Schoolhouse Rock Video on Electricity.





Khan Academy has Electrical Engineering Classes and info at the College Level.

Recommended:












ADS DISCLOSURE: We've partnered with some wonderful advertisers who may sponsor blog posts or send us samples to test. Some companies pay us to review their products. *We also use affiliate links, if you make a purchase we get a tiny commission. Kids Creative Chaos participates in the Amazon LLC Associates Program*, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a mean for blogs to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon properties, including, but not limited to, amazon.com, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com. We also offer Tapinfluence, Google Adsense, SoFab, and Izea ads here. Thanks so much for helping us keep the lights on! :)