Whether Mother Nature is creating flurries, rain, or just a bit of a chill on the other side of your windows, you can make a storm of your own—right at your kitchen table.
Crafts and experiments are great for encouraging kids’ natural Curiosity, one of the 5 C’s at the heart of the Begin Approach to helping kids thrive in school and life. Curiosity has been linked to a lifelong love of learning and greater happiness in adulthood, so it’s worth taking a few minutes to stoke it!
The Short Cut
- Curiosity turbocharges learning (it literally makes kids’ brains light up in scans)
- Science experiments encourage curiosity by getting kids to ask questions about what’s happening and why
- Parents can help by answering kids’ questions and modeling curious thinking themselves
Ready to generate a fizzy storm in a jar using household ingredients? Here’s everything you need to know about this perfect winter day science experiment.
Materials
- Water (about 1 cup)
- Baby oil
- Glitter
- Alka-Seltzer
- Nontoxic white paint
- Blue food coloring (optional)
- Mason jar
- Stir stick
Instructions
1. Fill your jar about three-quarters full with baby oil. In a separate bowl, blend water and a few tablespoons of white paint.
2. Add as much glitter and blue food coloring to the oil as you’d like, and then top off the jar with your water and paint mixture.
3. Drop your Alka-Seltzer tablet into the jar, and take a step back.
What’s Happening in the Jar
Because oil is less dense than water, the water will naturally sink to the bottom of the jar. When the Alka-Seltzer is dropped into the jar, its interaction with the water creates pressure in an upward direction, and the oil pushes it back down.
This pressure back-and-forth is part of what creates the snowstorm. The other element is the interaction between water and sodium bicarbonate in the Alka-Seltzer, which generates carbon dioxide gas. The combination of these factors creates a blizzard every time!
Cultivating Curiosity with Begin
At Begin, we know encouraging Curiosity is essential to give every kid their best start to achieving their fullest potential. Our award-winning learning products, from the hands-on activity kits of Little Passports to the at-home digital learning of HOMER and codeSpark, let kids explore new topics, engage with what interests them, and ask lots of questions.
Check out our Early Learner Program to see how our products can come together to help your child across all the 5 C’s.
