Science Mania

So, St. Nick is making me just the slightest bit crazy today. Yesterday he had the breakthrough that if he finishes ALL his schoolwork before lunch, the rest of the day he can do whatever he wants. I'm not sure why it took him half the year to realize this, but I'm also not sure I said it aloud until yesterday when I had to endure ten minutes of "I don't WANT to do math! I don't WANT TO!!!" (the problems looked hard - they were just set up differently than he's used to seeing them).

Today we cranked from one subject to the next all morning (sort of exhausting to me - I got used to breaks every five minutes), so he can do ... drum roll ... Science! For the rest of the day. In fact, every five minutes (during math, while reading, while I'm checking email) I'd hear, "Mom, can we do science? What will we do for science? Mom? Science?"

I now have two containers of snow on the counter because of this experiment. And I might end up with potatoes soaking in water because of this experiment, though I'm hoping St. Nick forgets because I'd rather not sacrifice a potato for the sake of science, not today anyway.

I can't imagine why it never occurred to me to check online for easy experiments before. But it didn't, until today (the "Mom? Science?" helped). Why, there are zillions of experiments online that I can do with stuff I have sitting around! Here are the best resources I found. I know without any doubt whatsoever that I will become a frequent visitor to these sites. My poor potatoes.



Steve Spangler Making Science Fun. What's especially neat are the videos that illustrate many of the experiments.

Easy Science Experiments from the "surfing the net with kids" site. Too many ads, but links to all the science sites you could wish for.

The Science Explorer is an advertisement for books, but has much online content as well including Science Snacks. No, nothing edible, just "bite sized" experiments nicely organized.

And Reeko's Mad Scientist Lab. Despite the white text on a black background, which makes my eyes go buggy, it looks like there are some fun experiments with nice summaries of what each one teaches.

This should keep us busy!