For many home school families, December is the time to immerse in everything Christmassy… and this often means winter break is filled with Christmas crafts. However, crafts are not everyone’s favorite activity. For science-loving families, easy science experiments rather than crafts are always a favorite.
Even if you are a crafting family, there are still fun Christmas Science Experiments | Middle School STEM activities that the whole family can enjoy and bring holiday science learning into your home. As you wind down for the holiday season we have some great ideas to bring a little science into your homes over Christmas break. Many of these are easy Christmas STEM science experiments that are low prep and can be enjoyed by kids of all ages.
Investigating the Scientific Method
As your kids enter middle school and are heading toward high school, it is a good time to introduce the scientific method to them. Although over Christmas, you may be wanting some easy, low-prep science activities to help you do this. Take an opportunity to remind them of the scientific method or even for them to design an experiment with this in mind. These can be used as great Christmas science projects, which could be added to a Science fair or count as science labs or projects.
- A super easy experiment where you can introduce the scientific method is to measure how quickly candy canes dissolve in different temperatures of water.
- Investigate insulation: Use different materials to wrap around beakers of hot water and record how the temperature falls over time. This experiment investigates the insulating properties of the different materials.
Biology Christmas Science Activities
- A classic science experiment in winter is investigating the conditions under which pine cones open and close. Take open pine cones and place them in water of different temperatures: hot, cold, warm, and no water at all. Leave them for around 15-30 mins. If your pine cones are not open to begin with, place them on or near a safe heat source to dry out beforehand. Pine cones will only open when conditions are optimum: when it is dry and warm. They close in damp conditions to protect the seeds. The cones will all close in water, but which close first? Afterward, dry them again, and they will re-open.
- Do a unit study with a fun holiday theme, like the biology of reindeer or reindeer unit study. Where do they live, and how can they survive such extreme temperatures? Or the biology of evergreen plants.
Chemistry Christmas Science Activities
There are some really cool Christmas activities that involve Chemistry. These easy activities have some great underlying science but are fun Christmas activities to do as a family. Students can see when chemical reactions occur when they see a change occurring. This may be a change in appearance or temperature. Encourage your kids to notice the types of chemical reactions that are occurring in these fun science experiments.
Make It A Chemistry Christmas With Science Experiments For Middle School
- A super fun way to incorporate science into Christmas is to make borax crystal Christmas decorations. You’ll need to dissolve 1/2 a cup of borax into 2 cups of boiling water. Use pipe cleaners to make a star, and tie ribbon or twine to them. Dangle the stars from craft sticks in the solution and leave for around 24 hours. You can split the solution between jars so the stars do not stick together as the crystals grow. Crystals are a great chemistry activity as they display the way the boron ions are arranging themselves on a microscopic level and at the micro level. Take a magnifying glass to have a close look at the shapes of the crystals. Then, you can hang these on your own Christmas tree.
- Make pH indicator from red cabbage or poinsettia leaves. To make the red cabbage indicator boil up the cabbage until the water is stained purple. Strain out the cabbage and allow the liquid to cool. For the poinsettia leaves cut up the red leaves, finely (or place in a blender), and cover with enough water just to cover the leaves. Heat the mixture until the water is colored red. Both cabbage and poinsettia contain anthocyanins which are sensitive to changes in pH. You can use your pH indicator to test the pH of different liquids. Some good ones to try are lemon juice, baking soda dissolved in water, vinegar, and bleach. It is important when using harsh chemicals to take proper safety precautions, and wear goggles.
- A science activity that combines a Christmas craft that can be used as a gift is making bath bombs. Bath bombs contain baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) and citric acid. When the ball is added to water, the two dissolve and react together. The baking soda is an alkali and the citric acid is obviously an acid. To make the bath bombs smell nice, essential oils can be added to them.
- Slime is a fun, sensory activity. Kids of any age love slime. This also uses borax.
Christmas Slime Recipe
To make Christmas slime, use clear, liquid school glue and add glitter or Christmas theme confetti:
- 1/4 tsp Borax Powder
- 1/2 cup Clear or White Washable PVA Glue
- 1 cup of Water divided into 1/2 cups
- Food Colouring (Optional)
Method
- Dissolve the borax into 1/2 cup of water.
- Combine the second 1/2 cup water and the glue together.
- Add the dissolved borax into the glue and stir.
Slime Science Notes: Middle school students are of an age to begin to understand the deeper scientific principles behind this fun science activity that younger kids love. The glue is a polymer. Polymers are long, flexible molecules made of repeating patterns. When borax is dissolved in water, it forms a borate ion. The borate ions attach to the polymer strands and enable the strands to link together. This causes the glue to go from being liquidy to the consistency of slime. The water also allows the molecules to slide more freely. If the slime is left to dry out, you will have a solid mass of plastic.
Physics Christmas Science Activities
- As you decorate your home for Christmas and hang up the Christmas lights, it is an opportunity to discuss physics and electrical circuits. Today more Christmas tree lights are connected in parallel circuits, however not that long ago Christmas lights were good examples of series circuits. This meant if one bulb went out the lights, then none of the lights would work. A great investment in your home school is a simple electrical circuit kit like Snap Circuits. Have your kids build examples of series and parallel circuits to look at why strings of Christmas tree lights are now parallel and no longer series.
- Another fun craft is to make Christmas cards that light up! Using copper tape (this is flattened copper wire with tape on the back), LED lights, and a little watch battery, you can create a simple circuit. If you make a Christmas tree design, then the LED actually lights up.
Astronomy Christmas Science Activities
As we consider the Christmas story, our eyes are drawn naturally heavenward as we remember the star guiding the Magi to Bethlehem. This makes Christmas a lovely time to stargaze with your children. Obviously, in the Northern Hemisphere, winter is the season of dark nights. So this can be an opportunity to begin regularly stargazing as a family, perhaps to start a stargazing journal. Winter is a great time to get your teens excited about astronomy.
December is also the time of year we witness the Geminid meteor shower. This peaks around a week before Christmas (about 14th December). To observe it look towards the constellation of Gemini. However, if the 14th is cloudy, there will still be meteors in the days before and after the peak. Make a thermos of hot chocolate and spend the evening watching shooting stars. Take advantage of the early darkness to enjoy Astronomy and other Christmas Science Experiments Middle School STEM outdoors and even indoors with holiday science activities for the whole family.
Math Christmas Activities
Many families go light on academics over the Christmas season. However, there are fun ways to do some math over December.
- The Nrich website has an annual math advent calendar. This has a daily math problem to solve in the run-up to Christmas. The great thing with this is it is zero prep, and even on a busy day in the run-up to the holiday season you can “get math done!”.
- Study famous mathematicians born in December. Sophie Germaine was born in this winter season. Do a unit study into her life and work.
- Make maths fun over Christmas with games, and maths activities. Try the 12 Days of Christmas math challenge.
- Another fun activity for Christmas is to make a Sierpinski triangle Christmas tree card. Sierpinski triangles are mathematically generated repeating shapes. This is the math of chaos theory and fractals.
Engineering Christmas Science Activities
A perfect opportunity to bring STEM into the end-of-year home school or coop communities is with engineering challenges. Middle schoolers and high school students love the team-building component as well as the competitive nature of STEM challenges. Have teams compete to build the biggest structures with mini marshmallows and cocktail sticks. Or do a gingerbread house building challenge, and see whose is the strongest structure.
Christmas Science Experiments | Middle School STEM Fun
Hopefully, there are some favorite Christmas science experiments for you and your kids to enjoy. May you have a very Merry Christmas and a time full of memory-making and good science!
