Six ways parents can get kids into science at home
You don’t need qualifications to teach your children about science.
The science blogger Nanogirl, aka Dr Michelle Dickinson, is a nanotechnologist – working with very small things.
She’s also the author of a recipe book for parents and children called The Kitchen Science Cookbook, to teach children about cooking and science at the same time.
Dr Michelle Dickinson was a guest on 大象传媒 Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. She outlined six tips for getting your kids into science at home even if you didn’t like or do well at the subject at school!
1. Don’t think you have to know the answer
“Be curious and go on a discovery adventure with your children to find out. Don’t worry if you get it wrong.
“One example of this is to work out how sound waves work. If you take two metal spoons, you tie a piece of string to the neck of one, and then wrap the string around your fingers, put the string inside your ears and get the child to tap the spoon and hear what you can hear, you’ll be very surprised. Switch places and discuss why you think it sounds different.
“Don’t panic if you don’t know, you can go on an adventure to find out. But it’s super fun.”
2. Make edible earthworms in the kitchen
“It’s basically jelly worms that look like worms so you can eat them. They look disgusting but they teach your children about how things turn from a liquid into a solid.
“What you’re going to need is some red jelly, strawberry or cherry, a couple of drops of green food colouring to make the jelly go brown. If you like, you can add a bit of cream as well as the water because that takes them from transparent to opaque but you don’t have to, especially if your children are allergic to dairy.
“Take some plastic straws...hold them upright, tie a rubber band [around them] and put them into a tall glass. Now I know people think plastic straws are bad, but we’re not going to throw these away, you’re going to reuse them.
“Pour your jelly mixture onto the top [of the straws], put them in the fridge overnight and let them sit.
“The next day it’s going to be very exciting. You’re going to take out the straws, and you’re going to squeeze out the jelly, and out is going to shoot what looks like a jelly earthworm.
“My favourite thing to do after this is to take some chocolate cookies and crumble them onto the plate to look like soil and then you have worms in soil!
“Great fun for kids, it teaches them about the anatomy of worms, how things turn from a liquid into a solid and they also get to eat them in the end.”
3. Make a solar cookie oven
“For this you’ll need some sort of box, a cereal box or a pizza box is really ideal here. You’re going to cut a hole in the top of the box, cut a square out. You’re then going to line the inside of the box with some foil, you’re going to take your cookie dough and put it on the top of the foil and then you’re going to cover it with cling film or saran wrap.
“Next, you’re going to line the top lid of the box with some foil and then keep that open - I hold a chopstick or a pencil there. Then move it out to the garden on a sunny day and you’ll get the sun to reflect inside the box. That’s going to heat up the box and the plastic over the box is going to trap that heat in there. That’s going to make this box very, very hot. Hot enough to actually cook your cookie.
“In about an hour on a good summer’s day, you’ll be able to show your kids how to go out into the garden and make an oven that just uses the power of the sun and in the end of it, they get to eat the results.”
4. Make edible slime
“We all know that a lot of girls are getting into science through slime. My slime recipe is all about edible slime, only using food ingredients.
“You’ll need a bag of marshmallows and some corn flour and a drop or two of oil of your liking. Take the marshmallows, ping them in the microwave for about 30 seconds until they go soft, and stir them with a wooden spoon. Be careful because they are going to be very hot.
“Add about half a cup of cornflour, pouring it in slowly and you’ll see where it goes from a sticky goo to a slimy mess.
“When it stops being tacky, roll it out onto the table. Line the table with a little bit of flour, then get your kids to slime away. Kids know how to do this: they knead, they pull, they weave.
“When they finish, they get to eat the slime (don’t eat all of it, it’s all made of sugar)
“They get to see how slime can be made from food ingredients and how cornflour can be used as a thickening agent in cooking.”
5. Turn an egg into a bouncy ball
“An exciting experiment that takes a little bit of time...is to make an egg turn into a bouncy ball.
“You’re going to need an empty jar, you’re going to need a fresh egg and some vinegar. Put the egg into the jar, add vinegar, put the top on and just leave it.
“As you watch it over the next five days, you’ll see that bubbles start to form, and these are carbon dioxide bubbles, because the shell is starting to dissolve. The acid in the vinegar is dissolving the shell. Over five days, that shell is going to peel off and the inside of the egg, the membrane, is actually going to denature because of the acid in the vinegar.
“After five days, open the jar, pull the egg out and wash it and all the shell with come off.
“You will have the inside of an egg that you can touch and if you bounce it on a table, it will bounce like a bouncy ball.
“This will teach your kids all about protein denaturation and dissolving of egg shells and it’s quite fun.”
6. Just get messy
“People who are afraid of science because they think it’s expensive and it’s going to be dirty: it is going to be dirty, but it doesn’t have to be expensive.
“Go out for a walk in the park, pick up some leaves, do something that gets you muddy. Those experiences that are really sensual and use all of your senses actually become much more memorable for your children. Trust me, they will have a lot of fun too.
“Science is everywhere and everyone can be a scientist, not just people in lab coats.
“It’s really important that we encourage our kids to realise that the word 'scientist' means somebody like them so they can grow up thinking that science is for everybody and hopefully invent some of the coolest solutions for our future world.”
The Woman's Hour parenting podcast is released every Wednesday.
You can listen to the podcast here or you can download it on the 大象传媒 Sounds app.
