Science Articles

These pumpkin lava lamps for Halloween are a fun party activity or decoration and an unusual alternative to a traditional pumpkin. They are super easy to make and entertaining to watch, especially in the dark.

Other ideas are to try different colours, add glitter, or get creative and decorate the jar to look like a witch or ghost.

How to make a pumpkin lava lamp

You will need

• A clear plastic bottle or jar
• A bottle of vegetable oil
• Orange food colouring
• Glitter
• Water
• Alka Seltzer
• Black pen and pipe cleaners for decoration

Lava Lamp Instructions

Fill the bottle or jar  a quarter full with water, add some orange food colouring and mix well.

Top up to the (near) top with the vegetable oil.

The oil and water will separate into two layers. Water at the bottom and oil on the top.

Decorate as you wish, we used a black

This spooky slime recipe is perfect for Halloween! Stretch it, squish it, pull it or just pick the bugs out of it!

Easy Slime Recipe for Halloween

There are lots of different recipes on the internet for slime, but this is the one that has worked the best for us.

What you need to make no borax slime

¾ cup of PVA glue

¼ cup of water

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Food colouring

1 tablespoon saline solution

Glitter and other decorations – optional

All you need to do is mix the ingredients together, adding the saline last. The mixture will start to stick together as soon as you stir in the saline solution ( slime activator ). It’s great fun to watch and do!

Slime Challenges

Can you mix slime colours to make a new colour? Our yellow and blue slime made green slime!

How

Calcium is a mineral needed for strong bones and teeth. Calcium also plays a role in blood clotting, the normal functioning of the heart and is used by nerves and muscles to help us move.

This activity using eggs is a very visual way to demonstrate what happens if you don’t have enough calcium in your diet.

Which foods are good sources of calcium?

Cheese, milk, fortified plant milks, yoghurt, green leafy vegetables and tinned sardines are all good sources of calcium.

What happens if you don’t eat enough calcium

99% of the body’s calcium is found in the bones. If people don’t have enough calcium in their diet the body starts to take calcium from the bones.

Low levels of calcium can lead to brittle bones and a disease called osteoporosis.

We obviously can’t experiment with out own bones, but eggs shells are a good substitute! Egg shells are

A Halloween Candy Grabber is a great STEM challenge for Halloween. Children can investigate by making the grabber shorter and longer or add extra pieces like easy to hold handles or extra grippy bits on the claw part.

I added some teeth and an eye to make my grabber look more Halloween like, but you could make yours much scarier, or just leave out the decorations all together!

If you don’t want to use craft sticks, thick cardboard cut into strips also works well. Cardboard also has the advantage that you can use a pencil to make the holes for the split pins.

You’ll need

8-12 crafts sticks

Split pins

Drill to make the holes

Double sided tape

Googley eyes and other decorations – optional

How to make a Halloween candy grabber

Step 1

Lay out the craft sticks and ask an adult to help drill a hole into both

This dissolving candy canes activity is a great science activity for before Christmas when the festivities are in full swing or after Christmas to use up any leftover candy canes.

The idea is to place candy canes in different liquids to find where they melt the fastest. We used hot and cold water and vinegar, but different hot chocolate temperatures would also work well.

Dissolving candy canes is an excellent investigation for learning how to set up a fair test! This means you need to think about which variables you change and which you keep the same.

Controlled variables are things you keep the same. In this investigation, the controlled variables are:

• size of candy cane
• time the candy cane is in the liquid
• amount of liquid used

The independent variable is the thing you change. In this experiment, the independent variable