Time to bust out the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and all other Thanksgiving meal fixings in a new and exciting way! Let’s take away the days of meal prep and all the pressure of family coming, and just have fun making a delicious mess, mad scientist style.
Here are tons of wacky ideas for how to use your leftovers and teach your kids the joys of science. From bending bones to volcanic pumpkins, your little gobblers will brag about these fun experiments until next year’s festivities. Time to get crazy with cranberries!
1. Sprouting Sweet Potatoes
This simple and classic experiment is an easy and fun way to teach kids about growing food. The set-up can be done in the classroom with a cup with water, toothpicks, uncooked sweet potatoes, and sunlight. Students can watch over a few weeks to see the roots sprout and little starts grow.
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2. Turkey Baster Feather Race
This engaging activity can be done in the class or at home, but wherever you do it, you’ll have crawling excited kids! Show your students how the baster blows out air when they squeeze it. Give each kid a feather and see who can blow theirs across the room the fastest!
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3. Cranberry Slime
This messy edible science experiment transforms cranberry sauce into edible cranberry slime your kids can play with for hours! Slime is great for sensory play, and the colors, smells, and texture are great for learning.
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4. Make Your Popcorn Dance
This corn is not for popping, but with just a few household ingredients you can make it dance. Put the corn in water with baking soda, then add vinegar. When the baking soda reacts with the vinegar the bubbles will make your corn go crazy!
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5. Floating Pumpkins
This fun experiment will have your kids guessing until the very end! Ask your students in class whether or not they think a pumpkin will float in water. Record their answers, and say those who are right get a treat! Get a pumpkin and find a container of water for your students to throw it in and see if it floats.
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6. Pumpkin Pie Dip
Help your kiddos mix up this delicious pumpkin pie dip in a little kitchen experiment with tasty results! Mix the festive ingredients together and cut up apples for dipping!
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7. Crescent Roll Turkeys
These adorable flakey treats will delight your guests and bring out your kids’ creative side. The design looks complicated to make but is really quite simple! All you’ll need is some crescent dough, a cupcake liner, and a spoon.
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8. Bendy Turkey Bones
Leftover turkey bones on your hands? This food waste experiment will turn your demolished bird into a cool batch of bendy bones. Have your kids describe the density of the bones first with their experiment recording sheets. Then put the bone with vinegar in a jar and leave it for a few days. Remove and record the bendy results.
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9. Potato Clock
This generic and fall-themed science activity uses a few supplies you may have at home (nails and potatoes) and some you may not (copper wire, clip wire units, and an LED clock). The assembly is easy though, and your kids will love to see the clock light up and work!
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10. Colorful Pretzel Turkeys
Chocolate-covered and candy-dipped, this crafty food experiment will be a huge hit with your kids. Melt colorful candies or white chocolate with food coloring for the bright rainbow feathers, and use pretzels for the body and wings.
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11. Regrowing Veggies Experiment
You know the food scraps you usually toss in the compost or trash? Stop right there! Did you know a lot of vegetables can be regrown from small leftover scraps? Onions, carrots, lettuce, and many more can grow roots in water in just a week or two.
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12. Pumpkin Volcano
This explosive experiment uses lemon juice and baking soda mixed inside your hollowed-out pumpkin to create a chemical reaction with a fizz that will make your students gush with excitement.
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13. Thanksgiving Butter Experiment
Making butter is a tradition going back a long way. We put butter on and in many Thanksgiving dishes such as green bean casserole, turkey, pecan pie, and more. Butter is easy to make, put some cream in a container and let your kids shake it up!
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14. Cranberry Chemistry
Time to see some cool color-changing science with these special little berries. Put some cranberry juice in a glass and mix in some baking soda. What happens? Make sure to have some citrus acid or lemon juice as well to add to your mixture next and watch the colors morph with each new addition.
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15. Pumpkin Geoboard
Time to work on your kids’ motor skills with a cool Thanksgiving-themed geoboard. Try to find a pumpkin with thin skin so it’s easier for them to poke the nails in and create their design. Rubber bands are used to make the connections between the nails for a cool pattern!
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16. Reese’s Pieces Pumpkin Madness
This creative candy experiment is so simple, all you need is Reese’s Pieces and hot water. Put the orange candies in a shallow circular dish around the edge then fill the bottom with hot water. As the colors bleed it will make a magical pumpkin design.
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17. Pumpkin Pie Play Dough
This sweet-smelling recipe will have your kids playing for hours with this orange dough. You can give them cutouts to make shapes or mix them with food coloring for extra rainbow fun!
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18. Building With Cranberries
This simple experiment uses fresh cranberry fruits and toothpicks to make cool 3D structures. You can guide your kids to make a design from the link or let their creativity take over!
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19. Salt Crystal Feathers
Here’s a fun way to use those turkey feathers you plucked off your bird…or you can pick up some plastic feathers from the craft store. This experiment teaches your students about crystals and crystal formation through the use of salt. How long will it take for your feathers to be covered?
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20. Fizzy Turkey Science
Now we are getting into mad-scientist territory with this one! By mixing baking soda with dish soap and food coloring you can mold this paste into the shapes of turkey feathers. Add your paper cut out of a turkey body on top then pour vinegar in the bottom of the dish so the baking soda feathers react, fizz, and foam in bright colors.
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21. Turkey Egg Drop
Time for a Thanksgiving spin on a classic experiment. There are tons of innovative ways to drop an egg from a high place without it breaking. Make this engineering challenge a little more festive by having your students decorate their eggs before dropping them.
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22. Spy Cranberry Science
This simple cranberry science experiment has a secret code hidden inside! Get some paper and make some invisible ink using baking soda and water. Write your secret message on the paper, let it dry, then dip your paper in cranberry juice to reveal your message.
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23. STEM Turkey Lights
This craft and electrical experiment is fun and miniature, your students will carry their little pom lights around all week. Help them assemble the felt pieces and googly eyes with hot glue, and tape the LED lights to the battery on the back.
24. Colorful Celery
Did you know that celery is used in many Thanksgiving recipes for its sweet flavor when boiled or cooked? Put a stalk of celery in a glass of water and add some food coloring. The celery will change colors as the water is slowly absorbed.
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25. Sugar Glass
Sugar is an essential part of any holiday spread. We use sugar in a lot of Thanksgiving dishes like pies, drinks, mashed sweet potatoes, and more! This sugar glass needs a few kitchen ingredients to make, some time to boil, then it’s popped in the oven.
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27. Sprout Your Own Corn
This is similar to the other food waste experiments mentioned above. Place an old, dried-up ear of Indian corn in a pan and cover halfway with water. Set in the sunlight and add water when necessary until you see it sprouting roots.
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28. Identifying Gourds
There are so many varieties of gourds out there, from pumpkins and squash to melons and cucumbers. Get a few different kinds and let your students observe, touch, cut open, and dissect each to see how they are similar and different.
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