5 Fun Science Experiments For Kids at Home

Science always fascinates us. It has the validation of our existence, the formation of our surroundings and the beauty of the universe beyond our knowledge.

We believe every child is a scientist who can do brilliance in the scope of discoveries, inventions, innovations et al. A child can begin their experiments and science activities right from their home. A home is every child’s first science center. Today, as a science enthusiast, we are going to share 5 Simple Fun Science Experiments for Kids at home with the very common basic material like a ball through which your child can do creations and absorb the science concepts.

1. Make Your Own Solar System

Material Required:

• Large size cardboard of approx. 36 inches X 36 inches (approx.). (You can take bigger or smaller too, depending upon the size of your balls.
• A torch or yellow ball to be placed as the sun in the center.
• 8 Balls of different sizes and colors
• A set of watercolors.
• A paintbrush
• A paper strip
• Fevicol/glue

Take your cardboard sheet, and color it with navy blue or black. Sprinkle tiny drops of white color as stars if you wish to make it, to look better. In the center of the cardboard, place your yellow ball/torch and label it as the sun. Then fix the smallest ball near to your sun as the planet mercury (the smallest planet). Make a white circular orbit with your white color from mercury ball to the mercury ball, around the sun.

Your brightest ball will mark Venus or you can paste a glittery tape/paper to present it considering Venus is the brightest planet. Place and fix it slightly away from the mercury going farther from the sun. Make its circular orbit too, similar to the previous one. For mars, take your red-colored ball, as Mars is a red planet. Place and fix it at a slight distance from Venus and make its orbital path as done earlier.

Earth is the only planet where life exists. To represent Earth, take a blue or green ball and make patches of green or blue color on it as required. Place and fix it and draw its orbital path.

Similarly, for Jupiter take your biggest ball to represent the biggest planet of our solar system and draw its orbital path.

Saturn is the planet with rings, which you can represent by pasting the paper strip ring across the ball at the center. After Saturn, comes Uranus and then at the end, place a ball as the last planet of our solar system, Neptune. Your first Science Experiment for Kids at Home, your own Solar System is now ready.

2. Phases Of Moon

Material Required:

• A torch
• A basketball
• A baseball

Keep your torch in one place. At some distance to torch, keep your baseball and to some other distance in the same line, place your basketball. These will be your Sun, Moon and Earth respectively.

Now rotate your Moon in a circular path across your Earth (basketball) and learn & understand the phases of the Moon with the movement of the baseball. Here, we have to remember that the moon rotates on its axis at the same time; the Earth takes to complete its round on its orbit. Therefore, we see the same side of the moon.

As soon as you placed the moon initially, there is a new moon day on the earth as the moon is receiving sunlight at the back of it, in comparison to the side Earth is facing. When you slowly move the moon, the shadow is going to reduce on the ball and you will be able to see the waxing crescent phase. Similarly, on moving further, the child can experience, first quarter and waxing gibbous phases. Again, the sun, moon and the earth are in a straight line, with the earth in the middle position. At this point, the child can experience the full moon phase. On moving further, there will be, waning gibbous, last quarter and waning crescent phases respectively.

3. Make Your Own Earth Model

Material Required:

• A Basketball
• A physical map of the world
• A set of watercolor
• A paint-brush
• A permanent marker

Take your basketball and paint it in blue color all over. If you find it difficult, you can also paste small square size blue colored paper all over. Take your map, color all the continents in different colors. Cut each continent across its margin. Draw a line of the equator on your ball with the help of permanent marker for proper pasting of your continents as well as for the better understanding of continents in the northern hemisphere and continents in the southern hemisphere. Now, paste your continents carefully at proper positioning and you are done with your third Science Experiment for kids at home.

4. Day and Night Activity

Material Required:

• A Football
• Black and White watercolor
• A paintbrush
• A torch

Color your football, half in black color and a half in white color. Place the white-colored face of the ball towards the light indicating the daytime and opposite end as nighttime (black-colored face). Now rotate the ball, such that, blackface of ball is having daytime, while the white-colored face is having nighttime.

You can do this activity by using the earth model that you made earlier.

5. Eclipse

Material Required:

• A torch
• A small ball and a big ball

Place your torch at a place and turn it on. Then place the small ball as the moon and then big ball as the earth in the straight line of the torch.

The shadow of the small ball (moon) on Big ball (Earth) forms the formation of the solar eclipse. Now interchange the position of small and big balls.

The shadow of Big ball (Earth) on Small Ball (moon) forms the formation of the lunar eclipse.

So, these are 5 Fun and Simple Science Experiments for Kids at Home that every kid can perform by own and develop creative skills. At STEMforYou we perform many such Science Activities and give your child confidence and skills for using STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in the Real World.

These activities have been written by Ms. Divya Gupta, mother of two lil munchkins who inspired her to introduce science in a fun way right from their tender age and STEM activities are the best way to do so.