Try These Great Science Experiments for Preschoolers (2024)

This is a collection of fun, easy and educational science experiments and activities for preschool students.

Bubble Rainbow

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Use household materials to blow a colored bubble tube or "snake". Use food coloring to tint the bubbles. You can even make a bubble rainbow.

Hand Washing Glow

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Hand-washing is an important way to keep germs at bay. How well do preschool kids wash their hands? Let them find out! Get a soap that glows brightly under a black light. Laundry detergent glows. So does Irish Spring. Have the kids wash their hands with soap and water. Afterward, shine the black light over their hands to show them the spots they missed.

Rubber Bouncy Egg

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Soak a hard-boiled egg in vinegar to make a bouncy ball... from an egg! If you are brave enough, soak a raw egg instead. This egg will bounce too, but if you throw it too hard, the yolk will splatter.

Bend Water

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All you need for this project is a plastic comb and a faucet. Charge the comb with electricity by combing your hair and then watch as a thin stream of water moves away from the comb.

Invisible Ink

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You don't have to be able to read or write words to enjoy invisible ink. Draw a picture and watch it disappear. Make the image reappear. Several non-toxic kitchen ingredients make great invisible ink, like baking soda or juice.

Slime

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Some parents and teachers avoid slime for preschool kids, but there are so many non-toxic slime recipes that it's really a terrific project for this age group. A basic slime can be made with cornstarch and oil, plus there are forms of slime that are meant to be eaten, like chocolate slime.

Finger Painting

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Finger paints may be messy, but there they are a fantastic way to explore color! In addition to the regular type of finger paints, you can add food coloring or tempera paint to piles of shaving cream or whipped cream or you can use finger paints made especially for tubs.

Iron in Cereal

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Breakfast cereals are fortified with vitamins and minerals. One of the minerals that you can see is iron, which you can collect onto a magnet for kids to examine. It's an easy project that causes kids to stop and think about what is in the foods they eat.

Make Rock Candy

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Rock candy consists of colored and flavored sugar crystals. Sugar crystals are terrific crystals for young kids to grow because they are edible. The two considerations for this project are that the water has to be boiled to dissolve the sugar. That part should be completed by adults. Also, rock candy takes a few days to grow, so it is not an instant project. In a way, this is more fun for kids, since each morning they can get up and monitor the progress of the crystals. They can break off and eat any rock candy growing on the surface of the liquid.

Kitchen Volcano

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You wouldn't want your preschooler to grow up without ever having made a kitchen volcano, right? The basics involve baking soda and vinegar in just about any container. You can make a model volcano from clay or dough or even a bottle. You can color the "lava". You can even make the volcano emit smoke.

Swirling Colored Milk

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Food coloring in milk just gives you colored milk. Nice, but boring. However, if you drip food coloring into a bowl of milk and then dip a soapy finger into the milk you get magic.

Ice Cream in a Bag

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You don't need a freezer or ice cream maker to make ice cream. The trick is to add salt to ice and then place a bag of ice cream ingredients in this extra-cold ice. It's kind of amazing, even for adults. Both adults and preschool kids like ice cream, too.

Cloud in a Bottle

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Show preschoolers how clouds form. All you need is a plastic bottle, a little water, and a match. As with other projects, it's entertaining even when you are older to make a cloud form, disappear and reform inside of a bottle.

Colored Salt

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Take bowls of regular salt or Epsom salt, add a few drops of food coloring to each bowl to color the salt and layer the salt in jars. Kids love making their own decorations, plus it's a great way to explore how color works.

Clean and Color Pennies

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Explore chemical reactions by cleaning pennies. Certain common household chemicals make pennies brighter, while others cause reactions that produce green verdigris or other coatings on the pennies. This is also a good opportunity to work with sorting and math.

Edible Glitter

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Kids love glitter, but most glitter contains plastic or even metals! You can make non-toxic and even edible glitter. The glitter is great for science and craft projects or for costumes and decorations.