I love doing science experiments with kids! First of all, there is the excitement and wonder in their eyes when you show them something they haven't seen before. But secondly, they start putting the ideas together for themselves, and that's when you know they are learning something from the experience, while having fun. This month, I focused on experiments with light and sound. In the future, I might split these into two seperate topics because there are a lot of experiments that can be done with both. But, for now, we'll just take them as one.
Light
Stand about five feet away from a window, and face away from the window with a magnifying glass in your hand. Hold a piece of white paper in your other hand, and let the light shining through the magnifying glass hit the piece of paper. An upside down picture of whatever is outside the window will appear on the piece of paper.
This experiment is great for talking about lenses, cameras, and whether something is concave or convex.
Sound
Can you see sound? Of course not! Or can we? Spread some plastic wrap over the entire opening of a bowl, and put some rice on top of that. Grab two 2 liter bottles, and bang them together over the bowl. The rice will start to jump.
This experiment obviously shows sound waves in action, and can be used to introduce the topic, or show some effects of sound.
Other Resources
There are a whole bunch of science experiment books on the shelves at my library. A couple I used were Light: An Investigation by John Gorman, Light by Sally M. Walker, and Experiments with Light and Sound by Trevor Cook.
If you can't get over to your library, I just Googled "sound experiments" and "light experiments" and got more experiments than I knew what to do with. These three sites made my list.
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kogrange/sound_experiments.html
http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/science-projects-for-kids-producing-sounds.htm
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