How to Set up a Nature Exploration Station

If spring is starting to happen where you live, now is a great time to go on a nature walk and collect some fun things to observe in the classroom or at home. With Earth Day this week, it’s even more appropriate, but of course you can do this any time of year.

Mama. Papa. Bubba. has an easy idea for a spring exploration station, but you can use the same materials with anything that you gather outdoors any time of year.

A few simple observational tools and a good notebook for drawing, taking rubbings or writing down observations are all you really need to start observing the outdoors. And of course when kids and adults pay more attention to the world around them, they’re more likely to want to take care of.

Get all the details from Mama. Papa. Bubba.

[Photo: Mama. Papa. Bubba.]

If it’s hot where you live, you might be looking for some fun activities you can do with kids inside the house. And while bubbles are generally a strictly outside the house kid of activity, these special bubbles are ones you can play with inside. It’s both a lot of fun and a science lesson.

These bubbles aren’t blown into the air, you blow them onto a tabletop gently through a straw.

What’s really cool about them is that they will stay on the table top without popping. You can even blow another bubble inside the first bubble, or stack bubbles on top of each other.

Why does this work? It’s thanks to a special ingredient in the bubble solution: sugar.

This particular recipe is from Play Party Game, but I’m sure you can find it other places with similar ingredients as well. But this post has a good explanation for what is normally happening with regular bubble solution made mostly with just soap and water, as well as why the sugar helps to make bubbles stronger and helps them last longer.

You could make this into a full on science experiment for your kids, comparing regular bubbles (this time you’ll want to do it outside or somewhere easy to clean) to the “unbreakable” bubbles, letting them hypothesize about what ingredients might help make bubbles stronger or what the sugar does to the solution.

You can talk about the molecular structure of the bubble being altered by the sugar, which makes it stronger and longer lasting.

They even have an activity kit you can buy to help guide your explorations and that offers extension activities for you to try.

Or you could just play with them. No judgement here; it’s summertime.

Grab the recipe and more of the science behind the bubbles from Play Party Game. And while you’re playing with bubbles you can also check out my giant bubble solution recipe over at Our Daily Craft.

[Photo: Play Party Game]

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