Balloon drums. Science Sound Experiment

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This week, we have been doing experiments with sound. We added this to our sound science series.  Balloon drums are super easy to make. We experiment with how tight the balloon is and what different sounds are made.

You will need

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Cups

Balloons

Chopsticks

Scissors and Tapes

What we do

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1. Cut the neck of the balloon with scissors. 
2. Stretch the balloon's body on a cup. 
3. For safety, tape the side of the balloon to the cup to keep it on.
4. We use chopsticks as drumsticks, but you can use whatever you can find, pencils, pens, etc.

What we learn

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1. When we tap on the drums, the balloon on the drum vibrates. As the result, the air molecules vibrate against each other, sound waves are formed and the sound of the drums can be heard. 

2. We try different sizes of balloon or different tightness of the balloons on the cups. They make different sounds. The tighter the drum skin, the higher pitch it gets. 

3. For further experiment, instead of cups, we can try making drums with different containers (cans, coffee tins, etc). Or we can try using different drumsticks, to see if it make the same sound. 

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Painting with Balloons

Painting is visual art that children can learn and develop their natural imagination, problem solving, sensory and motor skills. Today we are using balloons instead of paint brushes. Let's see how we do it.

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You'll Need

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Water paints

Different size balloons

Plastic plate

A piece of paper.

What We Do

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1. Put some paint in the plate. We use three main colours, red, blue and yellow  to start of with. 
2. Put a balloon on the paint, then stamp it on the paper.
3. Use your imagination and make anything pictures you want.

What They Learn

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1. Painting can be very messy, but that is how they learn. Children develop their sensory skills through their sensory messy plays. They can explore new textures of paint, paper, balloons, etc.
2. Painting requires motor skills to manipulate painting equipment. They use their fingers to move the balloons around the paper to create what they want. This is how they learn how to take control of their world.
3. Painting let children express their thoughts, ideas or even their experiences. When Miss Two did her painting, it looks like a blob to me. But she said it was a butterfly. So it was a butterfly!
4. Children learn about shapes through painting. Pressing balloons on to paper create circle shapes. What can you make from circles. 
5. Children learn about colour. They learn that if they mix two colours together, they create a new colour. Because we only use there main colours, red, green and blue, Mr Four needs to mix red and blue together to make his favorite purple colour.

Our children had so much fun (making a mess) and couldn't resist to use their fingers to finish their painting! Let's see what they have made!

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Balloon Rocket Preschool Science Experiment

Balloon rocket is an easy and fun way for children to learn science. For our preschool children, we do not really talk about physic theory behind how it works. However, they did a lot of observation which is a basic skill for a scientist. Mr Four actually came up with how did it work. We talked about the direction that the rocket would go, how to do make it go farther, etc.

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I found a lot of balloon rocket projects that attach a balloon to a straw on a piece of string. As preschool children, this method didn't work very well with them. They tend to like just to blow the balloon up and let it go. Sticking an inflated balloon directly to a straw is hard to do. Plus, they can't keep  it blown up and let go as a balloon with sticky tape on tends to blast too easily. So we came up with a solution.  

What you need

  

A balloon

    A long piece of string

   A straw

   Sticky tape

   A pair of scissor

What you do

1. Tie one end of the string to a heavy fixture in the room such as a chair or door. Thread the other end of the string through the straw and pull it tight. 
2. Tie the loose end to another fixed object, keeping it tight. 
3. Attach a balloon to a straw, as shown in the picture above, then attach it to the straw on the string. 
4. Blow up the balloon.
5. You’re ready for launch! Let go of the balloon and watch it fly across the room.

For toddlers like Miss Two, she had fun blowing up the balloon and let it go. Blowing up a balloon is a great way to practice mindfulness of breathing, how to center in on their core and use their lung capacity to breathe more powerfully. For preschoolers like Mr Four, observing the balloon go along the string helps them understand more about natural cause and effect. And most important thing is fun. They learn best through play, don't they?

Watch our children playing balloon Rocket.

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