How to Make Shaving Cream Easter Egg Dye

This is how you can make some awesome marbleized looking Easter Eggs quickly and easily, without a lot of mess and spending a lot of money. Here’s what

Source: How to Make Shaving Cream Easter Egg Dye

I found a link on pinterest the other day that I just thought “Ooh, eggs and shaving foam”, pinning it for another day. Then I thought, let’s actually look at the method! It looks so, so simple. We’ve been planning on trying to make natural dyes (raspberries, coffee, etc) to paint some eggs here in school, but this method is much simpler and easier to put together.

In fact, I’ve put the ingredients on my shopping list to try at home!

Happy Easter!

13 Vegetables That Magically Regrow Themselves

13 Vegetables That Magically Regrow Themselves.

I found this link on pinterest so long ago and I have been desperate to bring it to light and actually test each one! The 13 vegetables are divided into easily do-able (spring onions, garlic, romaine lettuce, carrots, basil), feasible (lemongrass, celery, onion and bok choy), feasible if you’re a plant magician (avocado, sweet potato, ginger roots and pineapple) – I think it’s these that I really want to try, including the 3 years for pineapple!

It’s Buzzfeed so each vegetable has it’s own link. The first two levels could be really good fun to do at home or with a STEM group, or a standard lesson, too. Perhaps the top level are only really for at home! Or school technicians over a summer holiday!

Balloon Greenhouse | Activity | Education.com

Balloon Greenhouse | Activity | Education.com.

I found this on pinterest and am so intrigued to see how well this works. Ellen, the author, suggests using radish seeds, but I’m wondering if in a STEM environment it might be more useful and cost effective to use cress seeds. We’ll have to try it out with that.

I love the fact that you tie off and make a contained “world” within the balloon. I can imagine asking a group what a plant needs to grow and then asking them if the seeds have all of that inside of the balloon.

I also love the idea of also growing the plant outside of the balloon, to see how the balloon affects the growth.

Could this also work on a larger scale to demo phototropism? Paint the balloon all over, or on one side. Or just use a dark coloured balloon.

I seriously cannot wait to try this!

And of course, this experiment is perfectly suited to be done at home – that’s what Ellen did. We’re just going to adapt it for inside of education. Or try to!

Does Aspirin Help Plants Grow? | Education.com

Does Aspirin Help Plants Grow? | Education.com.

I found this on a random google search where I was actually looking for something else and I know that I have found a few plant growth topics, but this one is a bit different.

The standard practice in schools to test plant growth is to use nutrient deficient solutions on already grown plants, or on cress, and we often find that we don’t get amazing results. Through mainly pinterest, I have found “at home” versions where you use water, salt water, sugar water, vinegar, etc – common household liquids. Obviously, if you’re trying to teach the science behind the nutrients themselves that are needed, the “at home” versions won’t help.

If, however, you just want to introduce how plants grow rather than what they need nutrient-wise to grow, then this newly found solution can easily be added on: aspirin!

Apparently there is loads of research into how aspirin can help tomato plants, but this “science fair” topic is about testing aspirin to see if helps plants grow. This would be a lovely add on to the other household liquids that cress seeds could be grown with.

You just have to be careful with the aspirin when it comes to children. Definitely one to add on to the to-do list!

Fun Absorbing Experiment for kids

Fun Absorbing Experiment for kids.

I found this through pinterest, simply by the image of three sugar cubes and it got me to wondering… Could this be used to measure a rate? Depending on what the tallest tower is that can be built without the bottom cube collapsing, could you make a stack in a coloured water and time when the colour reaches the end/beginning of a new cube? If you could get to 5, would that be enough points for a graph?

Experiments for Kids | Effecting Plant Growth – Lemon Lime Adventures

Experiments for Kids | Effecting Plant Growth – Lemon Lime Adventures.

I really like this idea. We already use a version where we grow plants lacking certain nutrients (without phosphate, without nitrate, etc), but for a STEM session or science at home, this might be far easier to come to grips with. In the experiment Lemon and Lime did, they used tap water, river water, salt water, carbonated water and soda. I would love to add in acidic and an alkali water (both can be made easily at home).

Then, measure the plants and their growth over a week or two – obviously at home that is far easier to do each day and in STEM the changes might be huge within a week, but I still think it would be so fun to do! Plus, we sometimes have an issue with getting our STEM members to make predictions and they do it during/after the experiment (you know, when they can’t be wrong! Haha!) and this one is ideal because they won’t see any results for a week!

I think it might also be far more visual than the in-school version that we do! It might also be worth trying in test tubes with cress seeds as the watering them aspect is never as much of an issue and the growth is far quicker.

 

Plant an Odds-and-Ends Garden

Plant an Odds-and-Ends Garden.

Some “at home” ways to grow new vegetables. With beetroot, slice the top off and keep the green shoots attached, rinse it and place it in a shallow dish of water.

With celery, cut a bunch of celery down until you have only 3 inches of the base and put it in a shallow dish of water. Within a week, leaves should be growing out of the center. The advise is to peel away rotting stalks as it grows.

Basil stalks can be put into tall glasses of water (small leaves not submerged) and after a few weeks roots should emerge – this should be good to study and visibly see root growth.

Apparently garlic cloves can be fully emerged in water and roots will appear in a few days, sprouts may take a little bit longer, but still in a clear container this would be perfect and perhaps easier to study root growth.

Cut a washed sweet potato in half and put it in another shallow dish of water. Leaves appear in 2 weeks.

Some of these would be perfect for a STEM session – celery, beetroot and garlic for definite, with the others perhaps taking a bit too long. And of course they’re all amazing ideas for Plant Biology and for doing at home. I have a pin somewhere about other fruits/vegetables that you can re-grow at home so I will try and find that to add to this topic.

Until then, I can try out this one!

Christmas STEAM Advent Calendar: 25 Days of Learning Play – Left Brain Craft Brain

A quick little pinterest search and I came across this list of 24 STEAM based ideas and I wanted to share it before I made my way through the list looking at which ones I want to do (either at home or at work!). I wasn’t even searching for anything Christmassy! And now I possibly won’t have to due to using  Left Brain Craft Brain’s already compiled list! Especially as it includes Art with the usual STEM subjects.

Christmas STEAM Advent Calendar: 25 Days of Learning Play – Left Brain Craft Brain.

And, yes, I know it’s a few days early, and not quite December yet, but people need to plan!

Merry Christmas!

Building Week Part 2: Strong Shapes

Building Week Part 2: Strong Shapes. I discovered this through pinterest and I really like the idea of using the three basic shapes – triangle, circle, square – to test books on. Obviously it might be easier for us to use actual masses rather than books.

I think it could be quite good, not only as a fun activity for younger children as the original blog says, but also a basic preliminary in an engineering lesson. Before building the bridge, test these shapes. Or before building the tower, which shape will be strongest? And then predict, test and use the knowledge on the actual task.

You would have to keep the three shapes to strict rules – one piece of paper per shape. How can you stick it together? And then how do you place the masses/books on it?

It could even then evolve into building a structure with these shapes in what shape? For example, do you put three triangles in a triangle to hold masses or would 4 squares in a square work best. Vary this and increase the experiments!

Science Teaching Ideas and Resources on Pinterest

Science Teaching Ideas and Resources on Pinterest. An amazing pinterest board to follow. But then, aren’t all of Danny Nic’s boards, blogs, etc?