Explorify at home: Changing materials
This collection is all about changing materials. Everything is made of stuff – scientists call that stuff material – and we can use it in different ways in our everyday lives. We can make new materials that are useful to us.

Explorify at home is a series of science activities for parents and carers of primary school children who are learning at home. We define activities by age and curriculum topics in Explorify, but these collections are also suitable to do all together as a family of mixed aged children. Or if your little scientist just wants to explore further, pick something from the other age sections for inspiration.
For children aged 5 to 7
Hands-on activity: Bubbles are fun at any age. You can make a bubble mixture yourself by mixing 50 ml washing up liquid and 300 ml water together – but be careful to do this very gently to avoid making the mixture bubbly at the start. Let the mixture rest before you use it to make bubbles. Then the fun can begin trying out different things as bubble wands: cookie cutters, large paper clips, sieves, a colander etc. How big a bubble can you make? What colours can you see in the bubbles? How long do they last before bursting?
For children aged 7 to 11
First, take a close-up look: Cooking and baking are the most likely ways that children will experience making new materials. If you are able to cook together and look at how the ingredients change when cooking, that will be really helpful. Changes to ingredients when baking cakes or cookies in the oven are permanent changes, as this clip shows. Making ice cubes is not a permanent change as ice cubes melt to return water again.
Hands-on activity: For a healthy recipe, follow the instructions to make fruitburst muffins like in this recipe from the BBC Good Food website.