I checked one of my favorite STEAM idea sites and found some outstanding gloomy day STEAM experiments for you and your children. Little Bins for Little Hands is one of my very favorite STEAM resources because the experiments use things you can find around the house, there are pictures of each step and there is a video too. Maybe the thing I like the most though, is that after you do the activity, there is a guide for discussing what happened and why.
Frosty’s Magic Milk Experiment
All you need for this cute activity is full-fat milk, blue food coloring, Dawn liquid detergent, Q-Tips and a snowman or snowflake cookie cutter. (If you don’t have one of those, any cookie cutter will work.) After you gather your supplies, it’s just a matter of pouring some milk into a flat-bottomed baking dish, and then putting the cookie cutter in the middle of the milk in the dish.
The next step is to drop blobs of the food coloring onto the milk in the dish. Then pour some Dawn into a small bowl, dip the swab in it and then gently touch the swab onto the milk. Watch the magic happen! (Actually, it’s not magic, but chemistry, and lucky for us, there is an explanation on the site just in case we are a little rusty in the chemistry department.)
Snowstorm in a Jar
Another neat experiment on this site is one that your children will really enjoy. You will need either cooking or baby oil, white school paint, Alka Seltzer tablets and a jar, cup or bottle. You pour a little white school paint into a cup of water in the jar, then slowly add the oil almost to the top of the container.
Now break the Alka Seltzer tablet into pieces, and add them one at a time to the mixture in the jar. Let the snow storm begin!
Again, there are pictures, a video and the scientific reason for the snowstorm all right there.
There are more fun winter science activities on this site. Click here to see them all.
STEAM activities sure do make learning fun!
