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Kindergarten teacher here: What are some fun science related (or STEM) activities that are engaging and developmentlaly appropropriate for Kindergarterners? Maybe some that require miniminal prep/clean-up. Thanks in advance!

In our school, the kindergarten teachers have done a lesson on exploring the 5 senses. They have the students eat different foods for taste. They blindfold the students and see if they can guess the smell of different things. They have students reach into a paper bag to describe what object is inside for touch. They take the students outside and have them lay down and listen to the world around them and then document what they find for sound. For sight, they have grown seeds to show the observation you can make each day through sight.

This is a fantastic recommendation, Kristin! Thank you for sharing this activity with others. I've used sensory boxes made with empty cube-shaped tissue boxes. I'd put a mystery item inside like cooked spaghetti, rice, cotton balls, dirt, etc. Children love sensory lessons that involve mystery! And they provide the perfect opportunity to teach about the senses, which is part of their science standards. Great post, Kristin!

I recently completed a 2 day science lesson within my Kindergarten class that discussed the water cycle allowing the students to create a hands-on science experiment of creating the precipitation stage of the cycle on day 2. This was after the explicit teaching/learning took place on day 1 using the Bloom's taxonomy framework. Although the terms (cycle,evaporation,condensation,precipitation) are more so 1st grade standards, there are many ways to modify them to make it age appropriate. The students created rainclouds in a jar. They were able to predict how many drops of blue food coloring it would take for precipitation to break through our shaving cream 'cloud'. They were able to each have their own to get the opportunity to experience this activity, along with sharing their results with their peers. We discussed what a hypothesis is, an observation in which they drew on their recording sheet and jotted their actual results down of how many drops it actually took. This lesson was very engaging and the kids absolutely loved it!! I highly encourage an explicit teaching approach prior to the experiment to get them familiar with the lesson. Including visuals and hands-on application aspects help in teaching young learners.

This seems like a great science lesson for a kindergarten class. I appreciate that you designed it to allow your students to independently observe and apply their critical thinking skills, as well as work collaboratively with their peers to develop social skills. Additionally, hands-on activities always enhance learning and make it more enjoyable.

Hello, if you have a place to take children on a nature walk, you can collect leaves and rocks, discuss what they found, and encourage students to observe. If you don't have space for a walk, you can do a simple and clean experiment can be rub balloons on different materials like hair, wood, and wool, and have the children observe how the balloons attract paper pieces. This is a great way to demonstrate static electricity, and kids love it.