Science Activities for Kids

Learn how to tell time in no time at all with this fun race with time activity. This science activity is ideal for young children that enjoy easy crafts.

What You'll Need:

Each player makes their own clock face out of a paper plate, complete with moving minute and hour hands. Mark the paper plate with the hours, as on a clock.

Cut out a big hand and a small hand from colored paper. Attach the hands in the middle of the plate with a paper brad. Now you are ready to play the game! Ask someone to shout out times, such as 1:15 or 2:45.

The first player to move the hands to show the correct time on his or her clock face wins the round and five points on the score pad. The first person to reach 50 points wins the game.

Add more to the game: Score extra points for the player who can name an appropriate activity for the time (such as lunch or bedtime) along with marking the time on the clock.

Continue reading to the next page and learn more about our animal combos activity.

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Try this animal combos activity and mix-and-match animal features and colors to draw the most unusual zoo in the world. If you love drawing animals and easy crafts, you'll love this activity!

What You'll Need:

Find pictures of two different animals that are about the same size. Place a piece of tracing paper over one animal, such as a giraffe, and use a black felt-tip pen to trace the head and neck.

Then place the tracing paper over the other animal -- perhaps a fox -- and trace the body and legs. You've just created a giraffox! Place a sheet of drawing paper over your tracing paper, and trace the giraffox.

Using colored pencils, give your giraffox a wild coat. Add feathers, fur, horns, or tails of other creatures to make your animal look even more different. Use this drawing technique to create all kinds of original animals.

Think of combinations to make the most ferocious, the fastest or the most colorful creature.

Do you have a soft spot for geometry? Put your math skills to work with our triangle treat activity on the next page.

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Try this triangle treat activity and make a three-sided sensation for mathematical fun. This activity is ideal for children who enjoy easy crafts.

What You'll Need:

Triangles are three-sided wonders. Can anyone get enough of them? If you love these geometric gems, why not try this artful game? Cut colorful card stock into dozens of tiny triangles.

Now arrange the triangles into delightful shapes and designs on the floor, a table, or your desk. Can you make squares from triangles? Patterns? Designs?

There's only one way to find out. Get going with a friend for twice the three-sided fun.

Continue reading to find out more about our stuffed animals activity on the next page.

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Try this stuffed animals activity and build an adorable mountain out of stuffed animals. Is your room overflowing with stuffed animals?

See how your plush pals really stack up in this silly game. If you like stuffed animals and easy crafts, you will love this activity!

What You'll Need:

Carefully stack your puffy pets, measuring the pile each time you successfully add another beast. Write down your totals as you go to find out how high a stack you can make before it all falls down.

Compete against a friend or against your own best score. Put your bigger stuffed animals on the bottom of the pile, and save the smallest for your mountain peak.

Learn how to have a garden in your kitchen with our kitchen garden activity. Continue reading to find out more.

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Try this kitchen garden activity and grow a garden from foods you find in your kitchen! This activity is ideal for children that enjoy gardens and easy crafts.

What You'll Need:

To grow a sweet potato plant, poke three or four toothpicks into the middle of the sweet potato. Set the potato in a jar of water so the toothpicks rest on the jar rim (half of the potato should be under water.) Set the jar in a sunny place, and watch vines begin to grow.

For an avocado plant, remove the seed from an avocado and rinse it. Insert three toothpicks around the middle of the pit, halfway between the top and the bottom. Place the pit in a jar of water with the pointy side up. Set the jar in a sunny place, and make sure the water level doesn't fall below the pit.

After the pit has produced both a root in the water and a shoot above, you can plant it in potting soil. Plant the pit so that two thirds is below the soil and one third is above. Water the growing avocado tree, and keep it in a sunny spot.

To sprout an onion or garlic plant, cut an onion or garlic clove in half, and set one of the halves in a bowl of water. Soon a shoot will sprout up.

To grow apple seeds, you will have to convince them they've been through the winter. Wrap apple seeds in a wet paper towel, and keep them inside a plastic bag in the refrigerator for six weeks. Take them out and plant them in soil. Put them in a sunny spot, keep them moist, and soon apple trees will begin to grow.

Continue reading to learn more about our plant mosaic activity on the next page.

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Try this plant mosaic activity and show the many colors of plants. This activity is ideal for children that enjoy easy crafts.

What You'll Need:

Start with a trip to a grocery store. (If possible, go to one that sells a wide variety of beans and peas in bulk, so you can buy just a handful of each.)

Check out all the different kinds of dried (not canned) beans and peas. You should find beans in black, red, brown, white and speckles. You'll find bright green peas and light green Lima beans.

Lentils come in many colors, including pink! Don't forget to check out seeds, too: tiny black poppy seeds, striped sunflower seeds, green pumpkin seeds, and whatever else strikes your fancy.

Collect as many different shapes, sizes and colors of beans and seeds as you can. Then use them to make a mosaic. Make a drawing on a piece of cardboard, poster-board or plywood.

Then glue on beans and seeds to fill in your drawing.

Continue reading to learn more about our toothpick tower activity.

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Stacking toothpicks is harder than you think. Try this toothpick tower activity and see how hard it is.

What You'll Need:

Sliding one toothpick across the mouth of a bottle is easy. But stacking 10 or 20 toothpicks across the same small space is a challenge you'll have fun attempting, with or without a play partner.

Clean the bottle well with soap and water. Take 10 toothpicks in your hand. Start stacking them across the mouth of the bottle, then stack them across the first layer you set down.

See how many toothpicks you can safely stack without knocking the whole experiment down. Store your toothpick game pieces inside your bottle after you're done playing.

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