Family Science: Science Crafts

Many families take a long break at Christmas and New Year’s Day.  Would you like some science crafts?  First up is Benzoic Acid Blizzard in a Bottle.  (Snow globes). Home Science Tools sells benzoic acid.  Little kiddos can make glitter snow globes.  Grow Alum Crystals, Borax Crystals, or a Salt Crystal Garden.  Here are several winter, science experiments, including a snowball catapult, designed for younger kiddos.  Here are instructions to write your name in binary code.  Little Bins for Little Hands has a host of winter activities, including binary, winter words, such as ‘frosty’.  One last idea—Melting Ice Experiment.  Freeze ice in a plastic bowl.  Drop salt and paint over the ice globe.  I have used tempera paint successfully for this experiment.  Merry Christmas! 

DNA Sentences

 Okay, Making Sentences of DNA is a means to help kids understand DNA Transcription and Translation.  Here is a good slideshow.  Guess what?  This concept, the Central Dogma, is hard to understand.  DNA is locked inside the cell’s nucleus.  mRNA transcribes the message from DNA, exits the nucleus and travels to the ribosome (which has proteins and rRNA) to translate the message into a string of amino acids, a protein.  The activity takes a DNA sentence.  The kids write the mRNA message, encode the tRNA, then match the tRNA anticodons with words to make a sentence.  I took pix.  Yes, the activity has a key.  This really works to help kids understand the process.  Yes, it is overkill.

DNA Models on a Budget

 I have pricey kits because I teach Biology to the local Co-op regularly.  There are inexpensive models which work well.  First is this DNA model made with construction, paper toothpicks, and washable markers.  Label the construction paper backbone with phosphate and deoxyribose.  Make a key for the model.  Here is a model with gum drops.  Here is an origami model and a paper model.  I think the first model from construction paper and toothpicks, labeled works well.  If your teen is struggling to understand the construction of DNA, make more models.  Invest time explaining and identifying each part.

Hands-on DNA Models

 Whoooaaa! We completed Another Mitosis Mini-project and nearly completed the Lab-aids DNA and its Replication.  Like Lab-aids Molecules of Life kit, the DNA set is pricey, about $120.  Home Science Tools  has several DNA model kits for less.  Amazon has a model for $9.  I have one; it’s not bad.  I have one pictured below.  Take a look!

Another Mitosis Mini-project

 Every time I teach Biology, the kids make cell cycle paper plate wheels.  Here is a unit with activities about the cell cycle, including the cell cycle paper plate wheel.  I started the lesson with this presentation.  The kids Google ‘cell cycle paper plate project’ to see different models.  Then they make their own. The purpose is to make a model to help understand how mitosis is part of the cell cycle.  Cells are in the process of growing or getting ready to split.  It helps to see the process as a whole. The wheel is another study aide, like the Mitosis Models.  The cheap paper plates are easier to cut.  We fasten the two paper plates with brass brads or paper fasteners.

Mitosis Mini-Projects

 The kids make yarn projects for mitosis.  The kids literally copy and label diagrams for the stages of animal mitosis.  Why?  The more kids see, do, hear, etc, the more they learn.