Fun And Learning Activities | There's Just One Mommy

Coffee Filter Science Experiment

By OneMommy on May 14, 2013

Ready for some more simple science fun with the kids?

I remember doing this one back in elementary school. All you need are some coffee filters, colored markers, water, and a little patience and you can explore chromatography! (Don’t worry, it’s just a big word which basically means you are going to separate the colors.)

I showed the kids how to make colored dots with the markers along the bottom edge of the coffee filter.

Then we put just the edge of the filter into a shallow container of water, making sure the marker dots were above the water. (I had to use some clothes pins to hold the filters onto the edge of the container so they wouldn’t slide to deep into the water.)

Almost immediately you will see the colors start to spread as the filter soaks up water.

Make sure you keep those marker dots above the water line!

If you are patient enough the different colors will spread all the way to the edge of the filter. This is really pretty if you use several different colored dots!

Once the color was all the way to the edge, we took the filters out to dry. (If you don’t take them out of the water, the color will eventually disappear except for a thin line of color up at the top — like our green one in the picture above.)

I think my youngest preschooler could have drawn dots and watched the colors all day. We had a stove top full of colorful coffee filters when we were finished.

And what do you do with all those colorful filters?

Craft with them, of course! Be sure to come back and see what we make with our coffee filters later this week!

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~OneMommy

Posted in Fun and Learning Activities Tagged science, teaching kids 17 Comments

3 Preschool Science Experiments

By OneMommy on May 6, 2013

Our fizzing science experiment and what my kids call “gak” have set my kids crazy for preschooler science experiments.

And what could be easier than oil and water?

To make it easier to see the two different liquids, and to add to the excitement, I added some food coloring to the water before we got started.

A pair of plastic bottles with screw-on lids allowed each of them to conduct their own experiment, without making a mess.

Once they had carefully examined their colored water, I gave each of them a small container of vegetable oil to add to it. Before they poured it in, I asked them to make a few guesses what would happen.

Then they had fun tilting the containers side to side, watching the oil and water waves. With the lid screwed on securely, they were able to shake it to their hearts content.

After a while I got out another container. This time I started the experiment with several inches of oil in it. They used an eye dropper to add drops of colored water into the oil. (I think this was my favorite part of our experiment — so pretty!)

When we were finished for the day, we kept the oil and water mix in the two sealed containers.

The next day they were asking to do more science, and I was ready!

While doing some spring cleaning, I stumbled upon these old Efferdent tablets I used to use to clean my retainers. (Yup, pretty old!)

Efferdent causes bubbles in water. I was pretty sure we’d get some fun results if we put it in our containers of colored water and oil.

And I was not disappointed!

We added 1/2 an Efferdent tablet at a time. The kids had fun watching the bubbles rise up, into the oil layer. One thing I forgot about Efferdent is that it causes the water to turn blue; so our red food coloring turned purple by the end of it. My daughter got a kick out of that!

We are looking forward to our next day of science!

What science fun have you had with little ones?

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~OneMommy

Posted in Fun and Learning Activities Tagged fun with learning, preschooler, science 11 Comments

Train Activities for The Little Red Caboose

By OneMommy on April 26, 2013

My son loves vehicles. Trains, trucks, cars…anything with wheels. With his love of vehicles has come a large collection of preschooler vehicle books.

This week we focused on some of the train books. One of our favorites? The classic Golden book, The Little Red Caboose (affiliate link).

After reading the book, we got out the wood trains to try to retell the story. My son loved pushing the cars up the hill, having them slip down the hill until the caboose helped.

Then we drove our train through an alphabet maze.

I had made the maze up earlier, using upper and lower-case letters. The goal was to follow the alphabet and see where the train wound up.

At lunchtime I made a p.b.&j. train for us to share.

Chugga, chugga, chew, chew!!

Banana chunks made up the wheels and funnel; strawberries made up our puffs of smoke, and carrots were the track.

And you know, we just couldn’t resist being trains ourselves, singing “The Little Red Caboose!” (Wish I had a picture of that, but it’s hard to snap a pic when you’re playing a train engine!)

Looking for more ways to play with trains? Check out what we did during our Train Day last summer!
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~OneMommy

Posted in Bringing Books Alive, Fun and Learning Activities, Kids Lunch and Snacks Tagged alphabet, books, reading with kids 29 Comments

Plastic Egg Activity and Some Sweet Math

By OneMommy on April 7, 2013

One of the great parts of doing homeschool for preschool is that any day can be time for school. So today when I was cleaning up all the plastic eggs and thought about all the fun learning activities with plastic eggs we did last year, we got to have an impromptu math lesson.

I picked out eggs in two different colors, separated them and then wrote numbers on one half of each egg and made dots on the other half of each egg, using a dry erase marker. The idea was that my preschoolers could match the numbers up to the correct number of dots. My youngest was having a little trouble snapping his eggs together, but he found a solution — he decided to just stack the halves on top of each other. $preschooler math game$

And since we still have quite a few jellybeans…. How about a little candy math?

Instead of doing our usual sorting by colors or adding the candy pieces, today we made bar graphs.

Once they had their candy pieces lined up, they filled in each bar graph with crayon. Then we talked about which color they had the most and which color they had the least. $teaching about bar graphs$

Once we finished our math, and practiced writing the letter “J” for “jellybean,” it was time to burn some energy outside. I’m so glad it is finally warmer!

If you are looking for some other fun to have with those plastic eggs before they are packed away, check out last year’s post.

Looking for a yummy treat to make with your left over jellybeans? How about a few chocolate bird nests?

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Have you done anything creative with plastic eggs? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Or maybe you have something I could do with all this Easter candy? (Besides eat it!) Heck, we still have Halloween candy!

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~OneMommy

Posted in Fun and Learning Activities Tagged fun with learning, math, preschool 4 Comments

Making Play-Doh Volcanoes

By OneMommy on April 1, 2013

I hate to waste anything, especially if it’s something we could use for crafting. This includes Play-Doh when it starts to dry up; I have bags of it hidden away, just waiting for a crafting opportunity. We’ve made some fun Play-Doh monsters and even Christmas ornaments with it.

And most recently?

We had volcanoes erupting in the kitchen!

It was an easy leap — they absolutely LOVED our earlier fizzy science experiment, so I knew this would be a hit.

I got out 2 cookie sheets, making sure to grab the ones with edges to help contain the mess, and the old Play-Doh. Then we shaped our volcanoes.

What goes better with volcanoes than dinosaurs?

Once we had our volcanoes ready, we added a tablespoon of baking soda. We learned that if you sprinkle a little on the outside it makes for an even more dramatic eruption.

In 2 small cups I had 1/4 cup of vinegar mixed with red food coloring. (After all, lava should be red!)

They loved “setting off” their volcanoes!

We learned that the slower you pour the vinegar, the better the volcanoes worked.

We were able to use our Play-Doh volcanoes 3-4 times each before my daughter decided it was time to get messy!

The wet, squishy Play-Doh held their interest for a long, long time. I’m glad I used the cookie sheets with sides!

What messy fun have you had lately?

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~OneMommy

Posted in Fun and Learning Activities Tagged fun with kids, fun with learning, keeping kids busy, preschoolers 25 Comments

Preschooler Book Activities for Spring

By OneMommy on March 29, 2013

Spring is here!

(At least that is what the calendar says, although, as I’ve said before, it sure hasn’t felt that way!)

And that’s the name of one of the books we had fun with this week.
(Affiliate link)

You can tell by the cover of the book that ants are the characters involved in the story. And what do ants like more than a picnic?

We started our fun by having lunch picnic-style (inside because the temps are still way too cold).

Then we read the book. Three times.

The 3 year-old loved how each activity the ants did rhymed with one of the ant’s names. He giggled non-stop. (Good thing we waited until we were done with the red Kool-Aid before I read!)

The book deals with some seeds the ants find and plant.

After waiting patiently, and having plenty of spring rain, the seeds grow into beautiful flowers.

We have our own set of seeds that we have been patiently waiting to turn into flowers. We measured their growth and made sure they had plenty of water.

Then we hit the great outdoors for a spring scavenger hunt. I gave each preschooler a picture list of some spring items to find, such as daffodils starting to poke through the ground and buds on the trees.