July Nature Seekers 4 H Meeting

One of the things I try to do every year is to have a meeting with science experiments.  Science experiments are fun and the children enjoy seeing what happens.  You also can find many experiments that use household or easy to find items.  I decided for July we would do some science experiments with candy.  I also brought along the supplies to do the Strawberry DNA experiment since my children really wanted to do it again, which gave us 5 different activities.  I did NOT try out any of the other experiments before the meeting.  Two of the experiments were a flop but the children seemed to enjoy the process :)

I also forgot my camera.  I had my phone but all of the experiment instructions were in my phone and because I had to go back and forth and also run the meeting I did not get as many pictures as I wanted to.  I had 8 children plus two younger siblings attend this meeting.

Experiment #1 Dancing Gummy Worms.  First we added cut up gummy worms to a solution of baking soda and water and let them soak for 15 minutes.  Then we added to the worms to a cup of vinegar and the worms were supposed to dance.  This did not work!  Our worms sunk to the bottom and stayed there.

Experiment #2 was to make a skittle rainbow in a bowl.  We placed 3 of each color around the outside edge and added 1/2 in of water to the bottom of the bowl.  This turned out really pretty!

Experiment #3 was also with skittles.  We dissolved different amounts of each color skittle in a glass and then were supposed to layer them in a glass from most dense to least dense.  This did not work!  Instead of pretty colors it looked like a muddy mess.

Experiment #4 was to blow up balloons using coke and two different types of candy.  I wish I had taken more pictures because it blew the balloons up really well.  We were supposed to use nerds and pop rocks but I couldn't find those, so we used nerds in one and lemon heads in the other.  Only 10 nerds blew the balloon up so big I thought it would break.

Experiment #5 was extracting DNA from a strawberry.  You can find the full instructions here.  This is a really cool experiment.