Community Learning Center Blog

The first thing you need is a clear jar or plastic bottle. Fill the bottle halfway with vegetable oil and add water to the top until it is almost full. After this is done, add at least five drops of food coloring. You will the need to take an Alka-Seltzer tablet and break it up into several pieces. The final step is to drop each piece in one at a time and watch as bubbles begin to form, activating your lava lamp.

1. Provide puzzles of different countries and challenge kids to assemble the puzzle pieces correctly to complete the map. This is a great way to improve their map-reading skills.

2. Call out the name of a place, and have the kids race to find it on the map or globe as quickly as possible. The first one to find it gets a point, and the player with the most points at the end wins.

3. Create bingo cards with names of countries, cities, and landmarks instead of numbers. Give clues about the places before calling the answer. Have the kids mark off the corresponding places on their bingo cards. The first to get a line or a full card wins.

Glowing Water: Create this by adding a highlighter ink cartridge (the part that contains the fluorescent ink) to a cup of water. Let it soak for a few hours and then shine a blacklight on the water to see it glow. This experiment demonstrates fluorescence and can be a visually striking demonstration.

Homemade slime: Mix together equal parts of white school glue and liquid starch in a bowl. You can add food coloring or glitter for extra flair. Stir until the mixture forms a slimy consistency and knead it with your hands until it reaches the desired texture.

Egg in a Bottle: Place a hard-boiled egg on the mouth of a glass bottle. Light a match and drop it into the bottle, then quickly place the egg back on the mouth of the bottle. As the match burns, it consumes the oxygen inside the bottle, creating a vacuum. The difference in pressure between the inside and outside of the bottle will push the egg into the bottle.

Static Electricity Butterfly: Cut out a butterfly shape from a piece of paper. Charge a balloon by rubbing it against your hair. Hold the charged balloon near the butterfly, and watch as it sticks to the balloon due to static electricity.

Rainbow in a Jar: Fill a clear glass with water, leaving some space at the top. Carefully pour different liquids with varying densities on top of each other, such as honey, corn syrup, water, dish soap, vegetable oil, and rubbing alcohol. You can add food coloring to some of the liquids beforehand to make it more colorful. Each layer should float on the layer below it, creating a colorful rainbow effect. 

 Bingo: Create bingo cards with division problems instead of numbers. Call out division problems, and have your child solve them and mark the answers on their bingo card. The first to get a line or a full card wins.

 Tic-Tac-Toe: Create a tic-tac-toe grid and write division problems in each square. Players take turns solving the division problems to claim squares. The first player to get three in a row wins.

 Memory: Create pairs of cards with division problems and their solutions. Place the cards face down and take turns flipping over two cards at a time to find matches. If a player correctly matches a division problem with its solution, they keep the pair. The player with the most matches at the end wins.