Free science activites

A great way to bring science into the classroom is by involving students families. There are a ton of fun science activities to do if each family is willing to bring something in once or twice throughout the school year.
The first activity is called fat in food. All you need is one family to bring in cooking oil and you can do this experiment. The first thing you need to do is cut open a brown paper bag and lay it flat. Rub water on one spot of the bag and oil on another. Both of these should be labeled so the children do not forget which one is which. The children should observe that the oil leaves a transparent look because it is mostly all fat, and the water does not leave the transparent look because there is not any fat. Then pick a variety of food (left over from lunch that day) and test out how much fat is in each item, labeling as the children go. The items that look the most like the cooking oil spot have the most fat.
Another activity that can be done with parent donation is the physics of popping popcorn. All a family needs to bring in is three bags of popcorn not yet popped. As a class you would decided three different places you want to store the bags and for how long. Some places could be a cupboard, fridge, outside, or freezer. After the selected amount of days have been reached you will pop each bag of popcorn and see how the temperature effected the amount it popped.
Another activity is called the rusty penny. For this activity you will need two see through bowls or cups, two pennies and for a parent to bring in a little juice and soda. The class will put a penny in the juice and soda and watch each day to see which one it starts to rust in first.
The last experiment you can do in a classroom with the help from parents is finding out if adding salt or sugar to water will change whether it will sink or float. For this experiment you will need two glasses, water, salt, sugar and for a parent to bring in about a dozen eggs. First the children will put the egg in the water without salt or sugar and write down what happen. They will then add a teaspoon of salt to one glass and sugar to the other. Once the egg is dropped in the students will once again write down what they observed. Each time they add sugar or salt they will record how much they added and how it changed what the egg did.
There are a variety of great websites that give inexpensive science ideas to help keep learning fun and interesting for the students. Not only can parent donations help keep science cost lows but it can help keep other subjects cost effective as well. The website I focused on when talking about the experiments was:
http://www.easy-kids-science-experiments.com/science-experiments-elementary.htmlese