Kitchen Science

This booklet contains step-by-step instructions for science activities and experiments that are safe and easy to do in the classroom or at home.

Download the booklet (pdf).

Alongside each activity are teachers' notes giving ideas for discussion and extension in the classroom, with explanations of the background science and links to everyday life.

Learning outcomes

All of the activities encourage children to develop skills in:

• making predictions and pose questions
• making observations
• collecting evidence
• making conclusions.

The individual activities allow exploration of the following areas of science:

• Blow-up Balloon - expansion of gases and how gases differ from solids.
• Alka-Seltzer Rocket - gases, chemical reactions and forces.
• Lava Lunacy - liquids, mixtures, molecules, denisity and acids and bases.
• Cornflour Slime - some materials can behave like a solid and a liquid, depending on what you do to them.
• Milk Magic - mixing materials and surface tension.
• Fizzy Fountain - how different materials react together and learning about CO2.
• Bubble Trouble - the properties of water and the changes caused by bubble mix.
• Gravity-Defying Water - gravity and air pressure.
• Stupid Egg Trick - friction and gravity.
• Tablecloth Trick - friction.