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In our part of California, we don't get any snow. While we try to make at least one trip to Tahoe every winter for a weekend of skiing and sledding, sometimes it's still not enough snow to satisfy my kids. To recreate some of that fun winter magic, we decided to make our own snow! It was a great way to have fun with sensory play.Looking for more crafts to decorate for the holidays? Create awesome decorations and have hands-on fun with a <a href="https://www.kiwico.com/us/store/dp/rainbow-air-dry-clay-project-kit/5612" target="_self">Rainbow Air Dry Clay set </a>from the <a href="https://www.kiwico.com/store" target="_self">KiwiCo Store</a>!

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Pour 1.5 cups of baking soda into the tray.

The ratio of baking soda to shampoo is 6:1.

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Pour a 1/4 cup of shampoo into the same tray. 

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Use your hands to mix these two ingredients! The mixture will soon take on a crumbly, and less sticky, texture, which means your snow is ready for play! For extended fun, add food coloring to create vibrantly colored snow, find small toys to create an arctic habitat in the snow, or build mini snowmen with tiny button accessories!

tray

baking soda

measuring cup

shampoo (preferably white-colored)

Instant Sensory Snow

pulley

motion

mechanics

learning activity

This cute little desktop flagpole is a single fixed pulley. A fixed pulley like this one doesn't win you any mechanical advantage, but it can still make things easier to lift since it lets you pull down instead of lift up.

Press the clay around the dowel to make it stand up straight.

Attach two binder clips to the dowel, one at the top and one at the bottom. Bend the arms of the clips so they stick out to the side.

Thread the string through the ends of the clips, then tie it together to create a loop. Make sure it's nice and tight!

Decorate your flag however you'd like, then cut a diagonal slit in each corner on the left side.

Slide the string into the slits to attach your flag. Then pull on the string to raise your flag!

binder clip (2)

dowel

clay

string

stiff paper (about the size of a business card)

markers or colored pencils

scissors

Fixed Pulley

indoor project

toy design

engineering

KiwiCo crate box

STEM

pretend play

recycled craft materials

recycled

Explore engineering with this simple cardboard elevator. Then use your imagination to turn it into a parking structure lift, a dollhouse feature, or anything you like!

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Cut the lid off your crate. We'll use both the base and the lid in our lift construction.

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Cut a strip of cardboard from the lid, making it slightly narrower than the interior depth of the crate. If you're using a crate, this would be about 3 inches. Next, place the cardboard strip next to the box. Note where the sides of the box end, and mark the placement, going a little narrower than the width of the box. If you're using a crate, this would be just under 6 inches. You'll use this portion to create the inside of your lift. Score and fold the edges of the strip up. Make sure that both of your tabs are even in length. This piece will be the base of your lift.

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Next cut a thin strip from the remaining cardboard lid, about 1 or 2 inches. Place this strip next to the first wider strip and mark just inside the fold lines of the last strip you cut. Score and fold the flaps of this thinner strip down. This thinner strip will be the top of your lift.

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On the thin strip of cardboard, measure roughly a half inch from each side and punch a hole.

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Place the wider strip of cardboard on a flat surface with its tabs folded upward. Then, put the thinner strip on top and fold its flaps downward. The thin strip should fit just along the inside flaps of the wider base strip, creating a rectangular shape. Use hot glue to attach them together.

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Measure out and cut a length of string that is about twice the height of your crate when it's standing upright. Loop the string through the holes and tie your string together in a simple overhand knot.

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Now that all of your pieces are made, It's time to decorate! Use assorted cardstock and patterned tape to design your lift any way you would like!

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With the base of your crate upright, mark two holes along the sides of the box, about an inch from the top. Use a craft knife to cut these holes out, cutting them wide enough to fit the wooden dowel.

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Insert your dowel into the two holes. Your dowel should be level.

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Place the lift at the base of the crate, with the string and holes on top. Find the center of the looped string and tape it to the center of the dowel rod. It is important to get this centered or else your lift will not operate correctly.

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You now have a working lift! To make your lift go up, twist the dowel so the string wraps around the dowel, pulling up the lift. What fun objects can you find to put on your lift? What are some everyday machines that use a similar mechanism?

Want to make your elevator less work to use? Try cutting a cardboard circle and attach it to one end of the dowel. With the wheel added, you’ve turned plain old dowel into a wheel and axle mechanism. A wheel and axle is a super-handy simple machine used in everything from doorknobs to vehicles to — you guessed it — elevators. Together, the wheel and axle allows you to lift heavier loads than without it. If you’re only lifting pom-poms and cardboard, of course, it doesn’t make much difference. But if you were building a real elevator lifting thousands of pounds, you’d want all the help you could get!

crate or box

string / twine

tape

hot glue

craft knife

cardstock

hole punch

Cardboard Elevator

sound science

sounds

easy experiment

quick experiment

Can a Slinky make music? This sound effect experiment uses a cup to help amplify the sound of a Slinky and explore sound vibrations.

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Wrap the cup in wrapping paper to decorate it. 

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 Poke a hole in the middle of the bottom of the cup. The hole should be large enough to thread the slinky through.

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Push one end of the slinky up through the hole in the bottom of the cup, leaving about three spirals inside the cup and the rest of the slinky hanging out the bottom.  

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Holding the cup steady, let the slinky bounce up and down. Do you hear it? What kinds of sounds does it make?

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Experiment further with a plastic slinky. Does it make the same sound as a metal slinky? Try letting the bottom of the slinky hit the floor. Does it make a different or more pronounced sound?

Have you ever wondered how the “Pew! Pew!” laser sounds in Star Wars and other sci-fi movies were made? No, they weren’t real lasers. The sound engineers who make those otherworldly sounds actually use a very down-to-earth technique: they flick a slinky or a long metal wire. Slinkies (and solids in general) can transmit sound. You normally think of sound as a vibration in the air, but the air isn’t the most important part — the vibration is. As long as a solid can shake and vibrate, a sound can travel through it just like through the air. This is why you can hear a train approaching from far away if you put your ear to the ground. If the vibration in the solid is strong enough (or amplified by something, like a cup), it’ll also vibrate the air, which you can hear normally! The weird thing about sound in solids, though, is that different parts of a sound move through them at different speeds. High-pitched parts travel really quickly in solids, while low-pitched parts travel slower. So when you flick a slinky, the high-pitched parts of the flicking sound reach your ear first, followed by the lower and lower parts. It sounds kind of like someone running their finger super fast down a piano keyboard. Slinkies and wires are great for demonstrating this because they’re long (which gives the sound more time and space to split up) and they’re good at carrying vibrations. Find out what splitting sound sounds like with this acoustical project!

paper cup

pushpin

slinky

wrapping paper

Slinky Sound Effect

circuit

electronics

battery

art project

Can you complete an LED circuit using a graphite pencil? Learn about the conductive properties of graphite and draw your own design to see it light up!

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Use your graphite pencil and draw any design on your paper. Tip: Draw a simple image where all the lines are connected and make sure to create thick, bold lines with your pencil.

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In your drawing, leave at least a 1 cm gap on opposite ends of your drawing. Mark your positive and negative lines. 

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Once you're done with your design, place the battery on one of the gaps. Align the positive and negative ends with the graphite lines. 

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Take an LED and bend the bottom ends of the wires. 

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Tape the wire at the end of the lines across the other gap, aligning positive and negative wires. Make sure your LED stands upright. The wires should be in contact with the graphite lines. Tip: The longer side of the LED is the positive side.

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What's going on? Graphite is an electrical conductor, perfect for learning about circuits and electricity! Because graphite is low in conductivity, the success of a circuit will depend on the length, thickness, and amount of graphite on the paper. For example, the longer the graphite path is, the dimmer your light will be. It's time to experiment! Try drawing lines of different lengths. Does it make a difference to the LED? Try drawing lines of different thicknesses. Does that make a difference to the LED?

paper

graphite pencil - make sure they are art pencils!

foil

9v battery

leds

Graphite Circuit

chemical reactions

You’ve probably heard that water’s chemical formula is H2O, meaning that water is made up of the chemical elements, hydrogen and oxygen. But what does it look like when you separate the hydrogen from the oxygen? In this experiment, you’ll use pencils to create an electric circuit to do just that!

This experiment involves electricity and water. USE CAUTION AND SUPERVISE CHILDREN. Do not allow children to touch the water while the battery is connected. 

When you hook up the wires, electricity flows in a loop from the battery, down one of the pencils, through the water, then up the other pencil and back to the battery. The electricity actually breaks the water molecules apart into it parts — hydrogen and oxygen! The bubbles you see on the tips of the pencils are the hydrogen and oxygen gas created by this reaction. In fact, hydrogen gas is created at one of the pencils, and oxygen gas is created at the other.  This process is called water electrolysis.

If you watch very closely, you might be able to see that more bubbles are forming on one pencil than the other. That’s because of the “2” in the name “H2O”. When a water molecule splits, you end up with 2 hydrogens for every oxygen, so you see more hydrogen bubbles than oxygen bubbles.

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Use pliers to remove the metal eraser piece from the pencils. Then, sharpen both ends of the pencils. 

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Using the pushpin, make two holes near the middle of the plastic lid directly across from each other. Widen the holes with pliers until a pencil fits snuggly in them. 

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Fill the cup about halfway with water. Add some baking soda and stir it up. If you don’t still see some baking soda at the bottom of the cup after stirring, add more baking soda until you do. Then put the lid on the cup. 

If you want to add to this experiment, you can try it first with plain water and then with baking soda water. If you do, you’ll see only a few bubbles forming in the plain water (or maybe none at all), while adding baking soda to the water causes more bubbles to form. That’s because plain water doesn’t allow electricity to pass through it very well. Adding the baking soda makes it easier for the electricity to flow through. (In other words, baking soda water is a better conductor of electricity than plain water.) More electricity means that more water molecules are split, creating more bubbles!

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Push one pencil into each of the holes so that the tips of the pencils are submerged in water. 

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Place the 9V battery into the battery snap. Then, connect the loose wire leads to the leads coming off the battery snap.  

Matching colors will make this easier! Match red wire leads to red wire leads and black wire leads to black wire leads. 

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Connect one end of the alligator clips to the wire leads. Remember to match colors!

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Connect the other end of each of the alligator clips to the exposed tip of the pencils. 

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What happened? Can you tell which pencil is attracting hydrogen atoms and which is attracting oxygen atoms? (Hint: do you see more bubbles on one pencil than the other?)

pencils (2)

pliers

plastic cup

plastic cup lid

pushpins

battery snap with wire leads

alligator clips (2)

water

Splitting Water

construction

homemade craft

at-home learning

Use a straw and water to experiment with sound.

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Use scissors to make angled cuts on a straw.&nbsp;

Make sure the straw is still intact and that you're not cutting all the way through the straw.

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Optional: To secure the straw, cut a piece of cardboard into a right triangle. Match the right angle to where the straw folds and tape the cardboard onto the straw. Make sure the tape doesn't cover the open slit on the straw!

Panda Crate

Sprout: Koala Crate

Labs: Kiwi Crate

World: Atlas Crate

Studio: Doodle Crate

Labs: Tinker Crate

Studio: Maker Crate

Labs: Eureka Crate

100 fun science project projects for kids

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