Static Electricity Science Experiment & Activities For Preschool Kids
Science activities make for great learning ideas for your preschool children & toddlers.
Preschool science experiments can be fun and simple. Your children will soon learn that there are lots of fun ideas and activities to discover about how and why things work like they do.
This static electricity science experiment shows how to make static electricity and teach children about what it is in a fun simple way.
Preschool is about having fun while learning new things and getting involved in learning activities that help to develop different early learning skills and areas of development within your child.
Science teaches children, preschoolers and toddlers to observe changes and document results and observations while experiencing new things. Many times these science ideas are simple things that we as adults take for granted, but to children they are exciting and new scientific discoveries.
Static Electricity Experiment For Kids
This Preschool Activity Requires:
- One balloon, OR a plastic comb. (This science experiment can work with both)
- A piece of string or thread
- Small pieces of dry ‘O’ shaped oat cereal.
Activity Instructions:
- Cut the piece of string approximately 12-16 inches long. Tie a piece of the cereal to one end of the string.
- Tie or tape the other piece of string to the middle of a door way or edge of a table. (Try to find a place that will allow the cereal to dangle freely with no obstructions in the way).
- Wash the comb with hot soapy water and dry completely.
- Run the comb through long dry hair about 10 times, OR rub the comb quickly on a woolly sweater. (The comb will now be charged with static).
- Starting from either the left or right side, bring the comb towards the cereal nice and slow and stop as you see the cereal swing towards and touch the comb. Keep the comb still and hold it, and now wait and watch until the cereal moves away by it self.
- Move the comb and then try to touch the piece of cereal again. The cereal should move away this time as you get close to the cereal.
What We Can Learn from this Kids Science Experiment:
- When the comb or balloon was rubbed onto your clothing/hair it came to have a negative charge as electrons now went from your hair/clothing to the balloon/comb.
- The hanging cereal was neutral and was attracted to the negative charge. The electrons went from the comb/balloon to the cereal when they touched.
- This made both objects come to have the same negative charge which in turn caused the cereal to move away or repel from the comb/balloon.