After every Easter, our house has a plethora of empty plastic Easter eggs that I have NO idea what to do with. This year I came up with a great preschool STEM activity for my middle son. I used the leftover Easter eggs to make oobleck, slime, and dough using simple ingredients we had around the house! I was also able to teach him about how things are made (or manufactured). I added one supply to our STEM activity that helped us make oobleck and slime, but didn’t help with making dough.
Easter Egg STEM Activity: Learning how things are made
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Supplies
- glue
- 3 plastic Easter eggs
- 3 marbles
- corn starch
- water
- laundry detergent
- dish soap
- hot glue gun with glue sticks
- measuring spoons
- food coloring
Easter Egg STEM Activity
Step 1: Most plastic Easter Eggs have holes in them. For this activity, we will need to close up the holes. I covered the holes with hot glue, then waited for the glue to dry.
Step 2: Pour 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 1/2 tablespoon of water into one of the plastic eggs. Drop a marble into the egg, and add a few drops of yellow food coloring. Close the egg, and set it aside.
Step 3: Pour 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 1/2 tablespoon of gel dish soap into an empty Easter egg. Drop a marble into the egg. Close the egg, and set it to the side.
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Step 4: Pour 1 tablespoon of glue and 1/8 tablespoon of laundry detergent into the last egg. Drop a marble into the egg, and add a few drops of blue food coloring. Close the egg, and set it aside.
Step 5: Carefully hot glue the eggs’ seams, to ensure the eggs don’t accidentally open.
Step 6: Shake each egg for about 1 minute.
Step 7: Peel the hot glue off each egg.
Step 8: Open each Easter egg to see what you have!
Results:
We opened our first egg, and we had oobleck! I talked to my son about how the marble had helped mix up the ingredients while he shook the egg.
We opened the second egg, and found we had a little bit of dough, but a lot of left over cornstarch. It looked as though the marble didn’t really help mix the ingredients, but instead pushed the cornstarch up against the egg.
When we opened the last egg, we had perfect blue slime. My son was so excited about his slime! He also noticed that the marble had helped mix the ingredients, just like it did with making oobleck.
I added the marble to the experiment so my son could learn a bit about manufacturing that I had seen when I worked in factories. Often an agitator is used in a manufacturing process to mix ingredients (much like a mixer is used when baking a cake). While shaking the egg mixed the ingredients too, adding an agitator (the marble) mixed all of the ingredients even more!
Interested in other STEM Activities to do with you kids?
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