What is your dominant side?

Check out this cool experiment that will teach you more about how your body and brain work together. Test your dominant side by completing a series of challenges. Which hand do you write with? Which foot do you kick with? Do you have a dominant eye? Do you throw with one side of your body but kick with the other? Are you ambidextrous? Answer these questions and much more with this fun science experiment for kids.

What you’ll need:

• A pen or pencil
• Paper or a notepad to write your findings on
• An empty tube (an old paper towel tube is good)
• A cup of water
• A small ball (or something soft you can throw)

Instructions:

1. Write ‘left’ or ‘right’ next to each task depending on what side you used/favored.
2. When you’ve finished all the challenges review your results and make your own conclusions about which is your dominant eye, hand and foot.

Eye tests:

1. Which eye do you use to wink?
2. Which eye do you use to look through the empty tube?
3. Extend your arms in front of your body. Make a triangle shape using your fore fingers and thumbs. Bring your hands together, making the triangle smaller (about the size of a coin is good). Find a small object in the room and focus on it through the hole in your hands (using both eyes). Try closing just your left eye and then just your right, if your view of the object changed when you closed your left eye mark down ‘left’, if it changed when you closed your right eye mark down ‘right’.

Hand/Arm tests:

1. Which hand do you use to write?
2. Pick up the cup of water, which hand did you use?
3. Throw the ball, which arm did you use?

Science Experiments

Mixing Oil and Water

Some things just don’t get along well with each other. Take oil and water as an example, you can mix them together and shake as hard as you like but they’ll never become friends…..or will they? Take this fun experiment a step further and find out how bringing oil and water together can help you do your dishes.

What you’ll need:

• Small soft drink bottle
• Water
• Food colouring
• 2 tablespoons of cooking oil
• Dish washing liquid or detergent

Instructions:

1. Add a few drops of food colouring to the water.
2. Pour about 2 tablespoons of the coloured water along with the 2 tablespoons of cooking oil into the small soft drink bottle.
3. Screw the lid on tight and shake the bottle as hard as you can.
4. Put the bottle back down and have a look, it may have seemed as though the liquids were mixing together but the oil will float back to the top

What’s happening?

While water often mixes with other liquids to form solutions, oil and water does not. Water molecules are strongly attracted to each other, this is the same for oil, because they are more attracted to their own molecules they just don’t mix together. They separate and the oil floats above the water because it has a lower density.

If you really think oil and water belong together then try adding some dish washing liquid or detergent. Detergent is attracted to both water and oil helping them all join together and form something called an emulsion. This is extra handy when washing those greasy dishes, the detergent takes the oil and grime off the plates and into the water, yay!

Make Fruit Kebab Sticks

Fruit Kebabs are a fun, refreshing and healthy treat but are also a great way to encourage your kids’ creativity. If you are looking to increase the variety of fruits your children consume then fruit kebabs are an easy and fun way to do this.

• Learning Outcome 1: Children feel safe, secure, and supported.
• Learning Outcome 2: Children develop their autonomy, inter-dependence, resilience and sense of agency.
• Learning Outcome 3: Children develop knowledgeable and confident self-identities.
• Learning Outcome 4: Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect.