Science Club Experiments for Early Years

It's never too early to encourage a love of science in children, so if you fancy starting an Early Years or preschool science club or just trying some science at home, I've got lots of easy ideas to get you started!

10 Ideas for an Early Years Science Club

These activities are all easy to set up and complete with a little guidance and I've tried to choose investigations that only require inexpensive materials or things you probably already have.

1. Make a Superhero Float

Find the best materials to make a small superhero figure float. For this activity, you need only a selection of different materials to test and a water container. The idea is for children to design and create a float or lifejacket type item to make a small figure float on water.

As an extension task, children could investigate how to make the smallest possible item that still allows the toy figure to float.

2. Sorting Ariel’s Cave

This simple sorting activity themed around The Little Mermaid is great for learning about different types of materials and their properties. The idea of this activity is to sort items Ariel might have in her collection, depending on their properties.

Ariel's Treasures set up as a sorting activity for kids. Image shows magnets, hair bands, plastic fish etc in sand ready to be sorted

3. Mini Magnet Maze

This easy activity for learning about magnetism needs a magnet, paperclip and paper plate.
Children can design the magnet maze however they want and to fit any theme you might have for the term.

space magnet maze - magnet science experiment for kids

4. Birds, Beaks and Adaptations

This is a brilliant, simple science activity for learning about features or adaptations that give animals a survival advantage. Children use different shaped tweezers to pick up pasta and other small items to demonstrate how some are easier to pick up than others.

5. A bridge for The Gingerbread Man

Help save The Gingerbread Man from the sly fox by building him a bridge. Children can use basic building materials such as lolly sticks, twigs and pipe cleaners to design, build and test a bridge.

6. Sea Pollution

This activity is a great visual way to demonstrate the effect of pollution on marine life. Children create a container with shells, pebbles, and plastic fish and then add litter to see the effect this has on the fish.

Jar of water with sand at the bottom and toy fish. The jar has litter and black food colouring in to demonstrate the effect of pollution of marine animals.

A glass vase filled with water and rubbish to demonstrate the effects of pollution to kids.

7. How to make oobleck

Oobleck, or cornflour goo, is a wonderful sensory material that feels solid when squashed in the hand but runs like a liquid when the pressure is released. It's great for use with sieves and small plastic figures.

a tray of cornflour and water oobleck with toy figures and a sieve

8. Garden Zip Line

This mini teddy zip line is a great outdoor activity. I usually set up three separate lines with different gradients and ask the children to experiment with different types of harnesses to see how they can make the teddies fly the fastest.

9. Humpty Dumpty Egg Drop Investigation

A Humpty Dumpty egg drop is a great team activity that works extra well for a first or last science club of the term. The egg could be an elf at Christmas or part of a nursery rhyme themed term.

Boiled eggs ready for a Humpty Dumpty Science Experiment

10. How many coins are needed to sink a boat?

Find out how many coins it takes to sink a foil boat. Create different size tinfoil boats and investigate to discover how many coins each can hold. This is also great for counting practice!

Top tips for an Early Years Science Club

Keep it simple!

Avoid activities that require a lot of adult intervention. For things like catapults, I always make a few in advance, ready for one group of children to use, while I make more catapults with another group.

Be prepared

Make any construction as easy as possible. For example with the catapults, I put the double sided tape on the back of the bottle top beforehand.

Have a back up ready

I try to have a second activity that is almost stand alone in case something goes wrong or some children get bored with the main task. This can be something as basic as threading pipe cleaners through a colander, or making play dough brain models.

More Science Club Ideas for Early Years

Have a pirate themed term or half term using these easy pirate based science investigations. Learn about directions with treasure maps, save pirate coins from getting too wet, create simple codes and more.

Popsicle stick catapults are brilliant fun too, but can be tricky for small people. I usually make a few up in advance and then work with small groups to make extras.

My story themed science activities are also great for an early years science club. Read the story and then try a related activity.