Mad Science Mondays: Balloon Race Cars

Happy Monday! Here is the first of my Mad Science Monday posts, which will include family/kid friendly science activities you can enjoy together using mostly household items you already have or can purchase inexpensively. I have had a longstanding passion for exploring science with children, which I initially wrote about here. I've tested out many of my classroom experiments with my own son even from the time he was very tiny. Now as he gets older, he is able to appreciate and explore more of it from a hands on level rather than just as an adorable audience member.

We've just begun a transportation theme at our Mommy & Me Camp (my son is really into trucks and planes and trains these days), so it seemed natural to incorporate a transportation themed science activity to kick off our theme. After some Pinterest perusing and research on the subject, I decided to test out balloon car racing (found here) after exploring a whole slew of great vehicle related science activities (found here).

I decided to take our science time outdoors this morning. It has been really hot here. While outdoor time and fresh air are incredibly important for children and adults alike, this adult is getting a little less excited by the monotony of sweaty playground trips, sticky walks and the usual pool/water activities. I've been brainstorming ways to get more creative about how we spend our outdoor time (which I will continue to expand on in future posts) and one of the simplest and most enjoyable solutions I have found is to take activities we do in our daily routine outdoors--from reading books to eating lunch to art projects (added bonus: easy cleanup, especially if you have a sprinkler or pool nearby!), and today--SCIENCE!

Balloon Race Cars

Here's what we used:

• 2 toy cars already in my sons collection
• a broken toddler crayon as a balloon stopper (the wide ones that claim to be unbreakable but still broke)
• 2 balloons
• masking tape

Here's what we did:

To prep the balloon race cars, I first blew up a balloon, shimmied in the crayon stopper, and wrapped a strip of tape around the inflated balloon onto the toy car. For some added fun and anticipation, I brought some sidewalk chalk outside to draw a race track and let my son add his artistic license as well. We set up the cars at the start of the track, I removed the stopper (one at a time, although older kids could each have their own race car and pull their own stoppers out), said "on your mark, get set, GO!" and off they went! I re-inflated each a couple of times to test out the scenario again, and we looked at the differences between a big balloon versus a smaller one. When we were done, my son had fun just zooming his toy cars on the sidewalk race track for a while. This was a great reminder that bringing "indoor" toys outdoors can add new life to a toy that might be overlooked after a while inside. 

Got balloons left? DO MORE: 

Here is a photo from an activity we did a couple of weeks ago during a dinosaur theme. We made frozen dinosaur eggs using toy plastic dinosaurs stuffed inside a balloon then filled with water and frozen. Once frozen (I put mine in overnight), cut and peel off the balloon. We brought them outside and the frozen eggs alone were a great sensory activity. We added some small hammers (and some mommy supervision and support) to crack the eggs open and later took a swim break at our development pool to see what would happen if we left the dino eggs out in the hot sun.