You and your kids are already doing science experiments at home, informally! You just don’t know that is what you are doing!
If you have ever wanted to find out why something works the way it does, or why sometimes it works one way and other times it does something different, or how you might improve something you do all the time to make it better, and then played around with it, you have done an informal science fair project. Any time you play around with something to see what happens, try this, try that you have really done an informal science experiments at home.
Little kids do this all the time when they are playing in the sandbox, or playing at the beach. How wet does the sand have to be to make it so when you fill a bucket with sand, and flip it over it won’t fall apart? Your favorite recipe is something over time you experimented with until you found the perfect combination of ingredients and tricks of the trade. Even when mowing the grass you experiment with the fastest or the coolest patterns you can make.
What makes these a science experiments at home, even if it is informal?
Believe it or not, if you ended up with a solution or an answer, it was either dumb luck or you followed the scientific method. You questioned, you made predictions, you might have read up on the topic or talked to others to gather information, then you experimented and figured out you had to change only one variable at a time to see which one made the difference. Eventually you came up with a conclusion. With these kinds of things you prove yourself right by doing it again and again and having it turn out OK. (I don’t know about mowing the lawn, I think that is a never ending battle, and a really just a great excuse to get out of the house!)
Limiting the variable or in every day people language changing only one thing from one time to the next is the core of any valid science fair experiment, otherwise you don;t know which thing makes the different size of buckets or those beach toy things. Do the plastic ones work better than metal? Eventually as you get older you can take one look at the sand and know if it is right for building. What a great starting place to create home science projects!
When you make your favorite spaghetti dinner, you will add different things to the sauce in different quantities until you get it just right. In our house it involves a can of beer, a dark heavy one is best and we let the alcohol cook off. You nd up with a thick, rich flavor (that does NOT taste like beer!) Another experiment was which kind of pasta we like best. (vermicelli)
The never ending lawn experiment is always fun as each time you start out, you make a plan. This time I will go around in circles, or this time I will go from the inside out, or back and forth, with the goal of course to not have to go back and catch any blades you missed. You can try time of day, or how high or low you put the mower, and if it makes a difference with how often you have to mow. Never ending and always the best excuse to get out of the house!
When you children are young, their first school science fair experiments will be some fun simple things like seeing if different size and shape ice cubes take longer to melt, or which cereal stays crunchy the longest. Just like the informal science experiments at home you have been doing on your own without realizing it.