Kids Corner

Welcome to the Ottawa Refuge Kids Corner Online!
Explore crafts, environmental education pieces, and ideas for rainy day play.

Crafts
Downloadable templates and craft ideas.

Toilet Paper Tube Crafts

Beaver TP Tube Craft

Owl TP Tube Craft

Fox TP Tube Craft

Crosswords and Word Search

Leave No Trace Crossword Puzzle

Answer Key

Leave No Trace Word Search

Answer Key

Wetlands Word Search

Answer Key

Birds Word Search

Answer Key

Ecology Crossword Puzzle

Answer Key

Projects
Interesting projects you can do from home.

Make your own Microscope
Make a simple microscope using water and take a closer look at the world around you.The lens you create with water works like a microscope or magnifying glass, allowing you to see objects in much greater detail than if you were just looking with the naked eye.
What you'll need:

A piece of fuse wire
Some water
Objects to look at (newspaper or a magazine with fine print works well)

Instructions:

Make a loop at the end of the fuse wire about 2mm wide.
Dip it into some water to get a drop formed in the loop.
Hold it close to your eye and look closely at an object such as a magazine.
You may have to experiment to get the right distance but you should see a magnified image, especially if you have the drop as close to your eye as possible.

What's happening?
Pioneers of early microscopes originally used tiny glass globes filled with water to magnify objects, this is similar to what you are doing in this experiment. The water droplet forms the shape of a convex lens, which refracts the light and converges it at the point where you see the image clearly. It was later that the method of grinding glass to make lenses was perfected. Modern microscopes have many lenses in them and allow us to see extremely small objects.

Rain Gauge Project
How much rain is really falling when you watch a heavy shower through the window of your home? How about on other days when it’s just a light shower? Find out by making your own rain gauge, recording the results and studying your findings.

What you'll need:

A plastic (soft drink) bottle
Some stones or pebbles
Tape
Marker (felt pen)
A ruler

Instructions:

Cut the top off the bottle.
Place some stones in the bottom of the bottle. Turn the top upside down and tape it to the bottle.
Use a ruler and marker pen to make a scale on the bottle.
Pour water into the bottle until it reaches the bottom strip on the scale. Congratulations, you have finished your rain gauge.
Put your rain gauge outside where it can collect water when it starts raining. After a rain shower has finished, check to see how far up the scale the water has risen.

What's happening?
Rain falls into the top of the gauge and collects at the bottom, where it can be easily measured. Try comparing the amount of rain to the length of time the shower lasted, was it a short and heavy rain shower or a long and light one?
If you want to get serious you can graph the rainfall over weeks or even months, this is especially interesting if the place you live experiences varying seasons where sometimes it is very dry and other times it is very wet.

Combine your results with wind speed, wind direction and air pressure for a full weather report

Wind Speed Challenge
Harness the power of wind with some weather based projects that will help you understand wind speed and how it changes from place to place and day to day. Put your problem solving skills to the test with these fun challenges.

Anemometer
An anemometer will help show you how fast the wind is going by spinning cups around. The faster the wind is moving the faster the cups will spin.

What you'll need:

Paper cups
A skewer (or something similar to poke holes)
Straws
Scissors
A marker (felt pen)
Tape or glue

The Challenge:
Your challenge is to design something that can measure the wind speed. Create an anemometer that features free spinning cups that spin faster as the wind increases. The wind should blow into the cups pushing them away. The faster the wind the more force it has to push the cups and the faster they spin. You can measure the wind strength by comparing how many times the anemometer spins around every 10 seconds. Does it vary from place to place and day to day?

More Projects

Games
Follow these links for fun games to try!

Food Chains Game

Biology Quiz

Bird Song Hero

NOAA Games - Planet Arcade

Bird Academy Play Lab

Science Experiments

Make a Tornado in a Bottle
Learn how to make a tornado in a bottle with this fun science experiment for kids. Using easy to find items such as dish washing liquid, water, glitter and a bottle you can make your own mini tornado that’s a lot safer than one you might see on the weather channel. Follow the instructions and enjoy the cool water vortex you create!
What you'll need:

Water
A clear plastic bottle with a cap (that won't leak)
Glitter
Dish washing liquid

Instructions:

Fill the plastic bottle with water until it reaches around three quarters full.
Add a few drops of dish washing liquid.
Sprinkle in a few pinches of glitter (this will make your tornado easier to see).
Put the cap on tightly.
Turn the bottle upside down and hold it by the neck. Quickly spin the bottle in a circular motion for a few seconds, stop and look inside to see if you can see a mini tornado forming in the water. You might need to try it a few times before you get it working properly.

What's happening?
Spinning the bottle in a circular motion creates a water vortex that looks like a mini tornado. The water is rapidly spinning around the center of the vortex due to centripetal force (an inward force directing an object or fluid such as water towards the center of its circular path). Vortexes found in nature include tornadoes, hurricanes and waterspouts (a tornado that forms over water).

Make an Easy Lava Lamp
Learn how to make an easy lava lamp with this fun science experiment for kids. Use simple household items such as vegetable oil, food coloring, Alka-Seltzer and a bottle to create chemical reactions and funky balls of color that move around like a real lava lamp.

What you'll need:

Water
A clear plastic bottle
Vegetable oil
Food coloring
Alka-Seltzer (or other tablets that fizz)

Instructions:

Pour water into the plastic bottle until it is around one quarter full (you might want to use a funnel when filling the bottle so you don't spill anything).
Pour in vegetable oil until the bottle is nearly full.
Wait until the oil and water have separated.
Add around a dozen drops of food coloring to the bottle (choose any color you like).
Watch as the food coloring falls through the oil and mixes with the water.
Cut an Alka-Seltzer tablet into smaller pieces (around 5 or 6) and drop one of them into the bottle, things should start getting a little crazy, just like a real lava lamp!
When the bubbling stops, add another piece of Alka-Seltzer and enjoy the show!

What's happening?
If you've tried our oil and water experiment you'll know that the two don't mix very well. The oil and water you added to the bottle separate from each other, with oil on top because it has a lower density than water. The food coloring falls through the oil and mixes with the water at the bottom. The piece of Alka-Seltzer tablet you drop in after releases small bubbles of carbon dioxide gas that rise to the top and take some of the colored water along for the ride. The gas escapes when it reaches the top and the colored water falls back down. The reason Alka-Seltzer fizzes in such a way is because it contains citric acid and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), the two react with water to form sodium citrate and carbon dioxide gas (those are the bubbles that carry the colored water to the top of the bottle).
Adding more Alka-Seltzer to the bottle keeps the reaction going so you can enjoy your funky lava lamp for longer. If you want to show someone later you can simply screw on a bottle cap and add more Alka-Seltzer when you need to. When you've finished all your Alka-Seltzer, you can take the experiment a step further by tightly screwing on a bottle cap and tipping the bottle back and forth, what happens then?

More Experiments