Young children will love playing with magnets and experimenting with how magnets work. Give students two bar magnets with a North and South pole, and an assortment of metal and non-metal objects. Allow them time to explore with the magnets and the items provided. Prompt their thinking with questions such as "What happens when you put the two magnets' ends together?" or "Which objects are attracted to the magnets?" Encourage them to sort the objects into two categories: magnetic and non-magnetic.
Students will have fun shooting homemade rockets made of film canisters and Alka-Seltzer tablets while learning about chemical reactions. Fill a plastic film canister 1/2 full with water. Drop in 1/2 of an Alka-Seltzer tablet and quickly snap the lid back onto the container. Slide the canister lid-first into an empty paper towel roll with one end sealed with duct tape. The carbon dioxide builds up inside the canister as a result of the chemical reaction of sodium bicarbonate and acid. This causes the lid to pop off the canister and sends it flying out of the tube. Students can record the distance the rocket flew and experiment with different amounts of water and Alka-Seltzer in the canisters to observe any differences.
To demonstrate that different liquids have different weights and densities, create a colorful layered column with several different liquids and food coloring. Gather honey, Karo syrup, dish soap, water, vegetable oil, rubbing alcohol and lamp oil, then measure 8 ounces of each. Add different colored food coloring to the Karo syrup, dish soap, water, rubbing alcohol and lamp oil. Weigh the 8-ounce portions of each liquid and record the weights. Slowly pour each liquid into a large cylinder glass container, starting with the heaviest liquid and moving to the lightest. The liquids will remain separated because they have different densities. Refer back to the chart where you recorded the weights of each liquid to see how weight and density are related.
Students can observe how electricity is created from a chemical reaction using lemons. To create your lemon lamp, place a piece of zinc metal into one end of the lemon and a piece of copper metal into the opposite end. Pennies made before 1982 can be used as the piece of copper, and pennies made after 1982 can be used for the zinc. To create a stronger light, use additional lemons and place zinc and copper pieces in the ends. Connect the lemons using copper wire from the copper piece of one lemon to the zinc piece on another. Connect the ends of the copper wire to a small LED lightbulb to create an electrical current. The acid from the lemons reacts with the metal and creates energy to light the bulb.