How To Build a PVC Rocket
Build a pvc rocket with your family and explore how rapidly expanding gases can create a great deal of force.
Science
Layers of Learning science dives in to biology, earth science, chemistry, and physics with hands-on experiments, demonstrations, field trips, and printables. You can try some of these experiments and activities with your kids to see how it can work family-style, with everybody experimenting together.
Plate Tectonics
Plate tectonics is the unifying theory of geology. It explains how the whole surface of the earth changes and why it looks the way it looks. Use printables and coloring to teach these concepts to your kids.
Homemade Thermometer and Barometer
Learn to make a homemade thermometer and homemade barometer to really understand how these weather tools work.
Pop Bottle Ecosystem
Pop bottle ecosystems show how living and non-living parts of the environment interact and depend on each other.
Life Cycle of a Spider
The life cycle of a spider printable with book suggestions, info on the life cycle of the black widow, and a video to watch.
Hard Water Experiment
Dissolve some calcium in water to see how soap is affected by minerals in hard water. Along the way you’ll learn abut some of the properties of water.
Solids, Liquids, and Gases
Get a bunch of kids together and have them climb into a hula hoop to demonstrate the tightly packed molecules of a solid then the looser packed molecules of a liquid and the widely space molecules of a gas.
Heat Conduction Experiment
This is an easy experiment with household materials to show how metal conducts heat better than wood or plastic.
Learning About Rocks
Learn about rocks, from formation to identification, and get a printable rock cycle worksheet.
Floating Eggs Experiment
Float an egg in salt water and plain water to do some density tests. Then calculate density with your older students.
Growing Crystals
Grow your own crystals overnight then examine them through a magnifying glass. Look for faces and vertexes. Compare the crystals you grew to ones that form under the earth.
Marble Roller Coaster Challenge
Here’s a hands-on physics experiment. Challenge your kids to get a marble to travel through a roller coaster made with a foam pipe.