The human body not only absorbs infrared radiation, but also emits it. Show your children how they emit radiation with a simple liquid crystal sheet, which can be bought at most nature stores. Instruct your child to place his hand on a clean table top and let it rest there for a few minutes. While it's resting, explain to him that his body emits infrared radiation onto the table, heating the table's particles. After a few minutes, instruct him to remove his hand and place the liquid crystal sheet on the table. The sensitive liquid crystal sheet changes colors to show how the radiation from his hand warmed the surface.
To teach your child about photography, create a photogram, which turns any dark room into a camera. You will need to darken the room, shoving towels under doorways and taping construction paper over windows. Turn on a safe light (a red bulb available at most photography stores) and turn off all other lights in the room. Pin a sheet of photographic paper (also available at photography stores) to a wall. Set a flash about 10 feet away from the paper. Instruct the child to stand in front of the paper. When she settles on a pose, pop the flash. Put the paper into a light-tight envelope and take to a photo lab for processing.
Memory functions on associative properties, so children remember items better when they imagine them in familiar places. To teach kids about associative memory, play an educational game from Exploratorium: First, instruct the child to walk around the house, writing down 10 different familiar locations. For example, behind the refrigerator or in the bathtub. Now, instruct the child to sit down. Show him a sheet with 10 various images on it, such as a cat, a mouse and a banana. Give him two minutes to look at the pictures and imagine them in each of the places he wrote down. Tell him to imagine silly situations, like a banana bathing or a cat hiding behind the fridge. After the two minutes, take a 10-minute break. After the break, instruct the child to name all of the different images, using his location list as a guide.
When performing educational activities with your kids, you should know why and how these activities work. When kids play games, they must make choices and interact in an environment completely formed to cause learning. For this reason, focus not only on making the learning fun, but on using the entire learning setting to engage the child.