MARVELOUS MAGNETS
Welcome to our “For the Love of Science – A Fun-Filled DIY Forces Camp” series. For this camp day, we focused on the oh-so-entertaining world of MAGNETS! Read through for ideas on books, writing prompts, experiments, crafts, and more!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 But the gist of our day having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon. Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
Many kids may already be familiar with magnets – at least what they are and that they can make things “stick together”. In today’s camp, we get a brief intro into why magnets work the way they do.
We started off with an interactive web page, Magnets!, from pbslearningmedia.org. The interactive had some explanations and videos as well as a section to design your own magnet at the end 🙂
WHAT TO WATCH
For our video of the day, we watched an episode from a familiar favorite, Magic School Bus 🙂
- Magic School Bus Rides Again: S1E5 The Magnetic Mambo
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
If your kids are like mine, they’ll eat food they prepare for themselves way more readily than if I make them. Here are a few that were fun and easy for them to put together:
- Magnets and food generally don’t mix, but we did try to ‘levitate’ our paper plate by placing a magnet underneath and then attaching one of our Magnet Rounds to the bottom of the paper plate. While we didn’t manage to get the plate to actually “float in the air”, we did observe the N/S behavior of the magnets. Once they were done with that experiment, we cleaned up and ate a regular old snack.
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. Here are a few related to our theme:
- Magnets by Anne Schreiber This one is probably geared more toward younger to mid-level elementary children (It can be read to younger kids, though they may need some more explanations of the text). It is, however, very informative, has tons of pictures, and has a few challenges/interactives for kids to think about.
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: MAGNETS, FORCES, NORTH, SOUTH, etc..
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices.
- If you had all the money in the world to spend on magnets, what would you buy or create and why?
EXPERIMENTS
We tried to keep our experiments relatively simple with tasks that could be completed within a few minutes and definitely less than an hour.
- We picked up a N/S bar magnet for this experiment. We asked our kids to list out a few things they thought were magnet, things they thought were not magnet, and had them test out their theories.
CRAFTS
If your kids are anything like mine, they LOVE crafts! While this was more of a science day, you can still definitely work some crafts in 🙂
- We purchased some Magnet Rounds with Adhesives from Amazon and let them create some of their own magnets with any upcycles they wanted to use (cardboard boxes, lids of jars, etc..). They added in some construction paper & markers and made their very own homemade magnets 😉
EXTRA FUN
If you’ve got any magformers lying around, this would be the time to bring them out – they’re like blocks but magnetic!
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home play / summer camp guide! Hopefully this has helped grow the love of reading in your home and/or even inspired more ideas! Feel free to browse and find more STEAM camp ideas here: At Home Science Camp.
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other at home play / summer guides: DIY Camps.
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Happy Reading!
