EZ School Projects You Can Do At Home
Your teachers have added new mind-blowing experiments to the school’s curriculum.
Hey kids,
Now that you’re stuck at home with remote learning, we teachers know that you little Einsteins miss the fun, hands-on projects you used to do in school. Lucky for you, we’ve come up with some EZ activities that require minimal supervision at home. Sure, the time for prep and clean up may take hours, but parents know that even five minutes of learning these days is priceless. They will be thrilled to transform your home base into an innovative lab space for these fun experiments.
Physics: Newton’s Laws of Motion
MATERIALS: Condiment bottle (ketchup, BBQ, mustard). If not available, use a slingshot and a dozen raw eggs.
DESCRIPTION: The effects of Newton’s Laws of Motion and gravity on a moving projectile can be demonstrated by a hands-on approach: squirting ketchup from a bottle. Use a protractor to change up the angle of the squirt, and a ruler to measure the horizontal distance and vertical height of the splatter on your kitchen floors, walls, and ceiling. Plot these marks on a graph. If the bottle jams up, just stomp it.
History: Diorama
MATERIALS: Superglue and your parents, who will happily gather all materials needed and spend a whole day making the model for you.
DESCRIPTION: Build an elaborate diorama that represents an important historical event. We understand that reading old reference books can be a drag, so we’re cool with movie “research” too. Watch a historically accurate film, like The Last Samurai, Pocahontas, Cleopatra, or Braveheart for inspiration. Show off your diorama on Zoom to your teacher, then feel free to throw it away.
Arts: Music Appreciation
MATERIALS: Decibel meter and any object or surface in the house.
DESCRIPTION: Awaken the musician within you, your family, and neighbors by turning any household object into a musical instrument. Bang out sounds with a baseball bat, power tools, and Grandma’s urn and shout out your favorite song. Use a decibel meter to measure how loud you can get. Will 120 dB actually damage the human ear? Will 150 dB break glass? Find out!
Biology: Dissection and Decomposition
MATERIALS: A dead thing, big ass knife (plastic is acceptable, but dissection may take longer), cutting board, and goggles for gut splatter.
DESCRIPTION: Find a dead worm, frog, goldfish, or small rodent around the house. Lay subject on cutting board and cleave that sucker open. Draw some pictures of its guts in your science journal. Then leave the corpse out for 2 weeks and record the different stages of decomposition.
Bonus: Count how many flies enter your house in a 2-hour period. Assuming half of the flies are female, calculate the number of baby fruit flies that will be created in 4 days, given that a female fruit fly can lay about 500 eggs that hatch in larvae in 30 hours.
Your parents will scream in delight, as you experience the circle of life, right in your home.
Illustrations by the author.
