Chemistry for Kids

If any of you have ever watched PBS (Public Broadcasting Station) you have probably noticed a show for kids named Sid the Science Kid.  With Sid the Science kid, your children see fun and easy science projects and concepts that are easy to do at home with your younger children.

So this got me thinking about this years preschool curriculum that I was going to be doing with my 4 year old. I decided to add science once a week, along with math, and have her do simple science projects and keep a journal where she can draw pictures of what she has done.  Just like Sid.

This is one of the projects I found.  It's called Chemistry Fun With Pennies: Learn About Metals by Anne Marie Helmenstine, PhD.  You just simply take salt and vinegar, mix it in a cup until dissolved and add in some dirty pennies.  There is instant gratification with what the solution does to the pennies and then it is almost "magical" (to kids at least) what happens to the pennies after a long period of time.

I originally found this project in my resource book "I Teach K!" 6th Annual National Kindergarten Teacher Conference, 2005 Sponsored by Scholastic, but it had different ingredients for the solutions (hence the added glasses and solutions which are in the resource book project).  The results were not as quick as the above article project but the added glasses were nice because you can compare the different solutions and their effects on the pennies.

Then, Chemistry Fun With Pennies takes it a step further and adds another short project to it by having you make "copper nails" with the left over solution.  (So do not dump out the solution until after you make the copper nails.)

The initial project takes about 10-15 minutes total and the drying of the pennies and the copper nails take about an hour, but that is where the "magic" happens.

Below I have pictures and the extended version of Chemistry Fun with Pennies from when I did it with my daughter.

Chemistry Fun with Pennies (Extended Version)

• 4 clear 8oz glasses
• 3 cups water
• Dish soap
• 3/4 cup Vinegar
• 1 tsp. Salt
• 36 pennies (4 for each glass, 1 for each glass for dipping halfway, 16 to add to glass #4 in the end.)
• 2 steel nails
• Paper towels

1. Fill glass #1 with 1 cup of water

2. Fill glass #2 with 1 cup water and a little dish soap (no measurement needed for soap)

3. Fill glass #3 with 1 cup water and 1/2 cup vinegar

4. Fill glass #4 with 1/4 cup vinegar and 1 tsp. salt (stir till fully dissolved)

5. Place four pennies in each cup

6. Take one penny, not already in the solutions, and hold them halfway in the solution for about 20-30 seconds. (Watch what happens.)

• What happened to the pennies in each cup?
• Did the pennies change at all or did they stay the same?
• What glass changed the pennies the most? Least?

7.  Add the rest of the pennies to the salt and vinegar solution.

8. Allow pennies in the salt and vinegar sloution to soak for about 5 mins then take out half the pennies and lay them on a paper towel labeled "Not Rinsed."  Now take out the rest of the pennies, being sure to NOT dump out solution.  (Keep it because it is needed in the next step.)  Rinse the second half of the pennies with water to get off all of the salt and vinegar.  Lay them out on a paper towel labeled "Rinsed."


9. Wait about 1 hour for the pennis to dry and see what changes happened to the pennies. (For full explanation of Verdigris which is the green effect on the penny, please see the linked article above.)






Meanwhile:  Take the steel nails and place one laying completely submerged in the salt and vinegar solution and stand the second one up so it is half in and half out of the solution so you can see the change.

• What happened to the nails?

Have your child record what happened to the pennies in their science journal by drawing pictures of the experiment. (My daughter loves this part.) 

I do not go into full explanation of what happens to the pennies chemically but I do try to "kid" it down a bit saying we are cleaning the pennies and that the air is what makes it turn so dark over time and that the "dark" part of the penny, which comes off in the salt and vinegar, then attaches to the nails.  Also that the salt and vinegar cause the pennies to turn green because we didn't rinse them off and it kept making the penny change like magic.

If it looks like I missed something in the instructions please let me know;-)


Happy Investigation!