For some kids, Easter isn’t always about the egg roll and consuming their weight in chocolate. Future scientists will love these Easter inspired science experiments. There is a whole world of activities that aren’t Peter Cottontail-based. Inspire the future astronauts, chemists and bioengineers with some STEM-based Easter Sunday special activities.
3,2,1 launch!
If your little one finds NASA fascinating, use those eggs (the plastic kind, unless you want a big ol’ mess) to create a launchpad that Cape Canaveral would envy. Put your little STEMmers to work coming up with the best ways to launch their spacecraft. Little Bins for Little Hands has a few good ideas, such as spoons taped to clothespins, rubber bands on PVC pipes, or a measuring scoop on a wooden board. Your brood will agree that these eggcellent Easter inspired science experiments are out of this world.
MORE: 7 DIY Easter decorations that don’t involve eggs
Crystal eggs
Do you like your eggs scrambled, sunny side up…or covered with bling? If you have never seen an egg pimped out and bedazzled, now you can with this nifty Easter inspired science experiment that lets you grow your own crystals inside the egg. As seen on Little Bins for Little Hands, this is a way to teach the little ones about molecules and chemistry. Combine Borax, hot water and food coloring in a cleaned-out eggshell and let it sit for 24 hours. The result will be the fanciest eggs you’ve ever seen.
Incredible shrinking Peeps
Peeps have become the fruitcake of Easter. You don’t necessarily want to eat them, but they are always purchased and presented because, well, tradition. Some people have taken to putting them in artsy dioramas depicting movie scenes, or displaying them dying horrible deaths, so why not get in on the action, scientifically? Normally it would be taboo to test on bunny rabbits, but here it’s OK to make an exception. Gift of Curiosity has a great STEM experiment where kids can discover which liquid will dissolve Peeps faster: water, vinegar or soda. Make it even more fun by placing bets on which bunny will be reduced to a pink puddle first.
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The grass is always greener
Wilder Child has a cool Easter inspired science experiment that will help your kids cultivate their green thumbs. In this experiment, instead of an exploding egg being filled with chemicals, it’s filled with botanicals. You can fill a plastic Easter egg, or a real one, with potting soil, clover seeds and even plastic trinkets, and place it in nesting material in a pot. Add water, and within a day or so the egg will break open with shoots. In a week, you will have greens. In a month, you’ll be where the wild things are.
Fizzy rainbow
What better way to commemorate spring than with a literal explosion of color? Your kids will love the rainbow volcano that Preschool Powol Packets has cooked up. Combine baking soda, water and food coloring on separate plates for each color, rolling the mixture into egg-shaped balls. Then, place the balls in a pan in a half-moon shape to form a rainbow. To get this rainbow lit, give your kids a cup of vinegar and a pipette or eye-dropper and let them fizz away. With the chemical combo of vinegar and baking soda, the eggs will explode and ooze, just as a fizzy rainbow should.
It’s about slime
What kid doesn’t love slime? This mad scientist recipe from Preschool Inspirations has a special Easter theme to it — it adds glitter and Easter confetti featuring little baby chicks and bunnies. It doesn’t take a lot of ingredients either, just liquid starch, white glue, Borax, water, food coloring and the aforementioned glitter for pizzazz.