Some Wee Preschool Science Experiments

As many of your know, I spent the past 5 weeks filling in as one of the teachers at Finn's preschool while my good friend, and Finn's teacher, was traveling. It was a... well, let's just say interesting experience. Actually, it was pretty good. It took me a week or two to settle in and figure out how to best run things, and then there were a couple rough patches having Finn as my student. But, it has been fun to watch all of these kids interact, imagine and problem solve. And also tiring. Very, very tiring.
Anyways, since I love science I intermingled some science experiments into the daily routine. The following all came from the book Explore Spring, which I recently reviewed.

We put some carnations in colored water and left them overnight. The next day, the carnations were colored around the edges of each petal. Pretty cool. I am not sure that the kids really understood why the petal changed color, but at least the enjoyed the experiment.

We also watched celery change color as it sucked up colored water. This one they were not as impressed with.

My personal favorite was making a cloud in a jar. I thought it was just amazing. The kids, however, had other ideas. Finn was the only one who even watched, and then he sort of shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Oh well. I guess that one was geared toward slightly older kids and not for 3-5 year olds. I had fun though!

I think that the kids were too young for most of these experiments. The kind of science that they liked to do mostly involved getting muddy.

However, for the last day of school we made a solar oven and cooked s'mores in it. This is something that I do with my college class every year, and they always get a kick out of it.. I figured it would have to be a hit with preschoolers (isn't anything that involves chocolate and marshmallows a hit with young kids?)