My son has a huge taste for jelly beans. While the texture is something I can’t stand, he could play BeanBoozled for hours. No, thank you! However, using jelly beans for a science exploration activity is a win for both of us. Especially, when there is a surplus after the Easter holiday.
Use What You Have
Sometimes trying to find an engaging activity at home or in the classroom can get a little overwhelming. When gathering materials or planning the procedure takes time away from our family or our students, we need to simplify. One of the best hacks I found was to use resources I already have on hand.
During Christmas that may mean exploring our senses with some holiday goodies. During the spring we can enjoy investigating in our own backyard or playground. And during Easter that means using leftover egg fillers to have some scientific fun.
Keep it Engaging
Using seasonal or thematic science exploration is one way to get little learners engaged. But I also like to make sure they are able to join in on the science fun. By finding tasks that learners can complete makes the activity more engaging for them.
When it comes to our jelly bean science exploration, learners can review sorting by separating the jelly beans by colors. I also like to have them help me pick the liquids we use and complete an anchor chart together.
Jelly Bean Science
For this exploration we began by eating sorting our jelly beans by color. I placed a bag of jelly beans in a large bowl, put a couple of each color in a clear plastic cup and let the sorting begin.
After the jelly beans were all sorting we filled the cups half way full of warm water. You can also use different liquids like vinegar, sprite, water with salt, juice, etc.
Then, we made our predictions about what would happen. Grayson said that the water would make the jelly beans bigger. (can you tell that we have played with Magic Grow Capsules before…schema, baby!)
Set it and Forget it
Well, not really. We set a timer for 1 hour, so we could check and see if the jelly beans changed in the water. We checked the cups throughout the hour to see what little changes happened.
The first 5 minutes we noticed a few “white floating things” and in 10 minutes we noticed that there were “color clouds” at the bottom of each cup.
After 1 hour, we came back, gave each cup a little swish and were amazed to see the colors were removed from the jelly beans and had colored the water. So much fun!!!
This exploration is a simple, fun and engaging way to teach little learners about change and the scientific procedure. You can grab an experiment page by clicking the MJCS download link at the bottom of this post.
Need More Science?
If you need more ideas to keep your science curriculum engaging for your learners and manageable for you I have some posts and resources that may be perfect for you.
My Science Notebook is a great way to organize science activities and allow learners to respond to their scientific investigations
Check out these science activities and the free science resources I offer on my website.
If you enjoy using thematic units in your classroom, you can find many science plans in my Thematic Unit for Little Learners pack.
If you want to explore more changes in science check out my top selling resource, States of Matter unit.