Little scientists

(Pre-school and Reception)

Your child learns through exploring and investigating. In other words, 'hands on activities' that spark their curiosity. This in essence is science.

You can do small simple experiments in the home. Look for the experiments that have that 'wow!' factor for children.

Below is an example of a colour mixing experiment using skittles. There are lots of other ideas for experiments you can try at home on the NUSTEM website.

What do you need?

  • 2 bags of Skittles
  • small white plate
  • warm water
  • large bowl, coloured bowls, or an empty egg box for sorting the skittles by colour

What to do

  1. First tip all the skittles out into a big bowl and start sorting out the colours into separate bowls or an empty egg box. Make this trickier by using tweezers, this will develop your child's fine motor skills.
  2. Next start laying skittles out around the outer edge of the plate.
  3. Tip over a cup off warm water until the Skittles are half covered. Then watch the magic happen!
  4. Try different colour combinations and patterns for different effects.
  5. Talk to your child, about why the colours are spreading. Experiment with colour mixing (use a cotton wool bud to mix the colours and the lines into one another. What colours do they make?

Repeat the experiment with different patterns of coloured Skittles. What colours do they make?

Record your child's findings on paper with coloured pencil crayons. Or you could video or photograph the results and look back at them later. Ask questions such as 'I wonder what will happen if you use blue and yellow Skittles?'

Skills your child will learn

  • observation skills
  • explore and reason 'I wonder what will happen if ….?'
  • notice the outcome of your experiment – What happened?
  • recording findings in different ways. This may be with a photograph. You can use the photographs to compare and clarify their thoughts.