'Under the Microscope' Blood - Steam Powered Kids

My kids have been talking about Halloween quite a bit recently, (I know, it’s early, but we go a bit holiday crazy in this house) Anyhow, this conversation led to a discussion on blood, there were lots of questions and they are not squeamish in the slightest, in fact, the gorier, the better!

We talked about the fact that if you cut your finger, the blood that comes out looks to be made of uniform red liquid, kind of like red paint. However, if you look under a microscope, you would be able to see that your blood is actually made up of cells and liquid.

Blood, by definition, is fluid that moves through vessels of a circulatory system. This includes the following:

PLASMA: The main component of blood consisting mostly of water.

RED BLOOD CELLS: Responsible for carrying oxygen and carbon dioxide.

WHITE BLOOD CELLS: Part of the germ fighting immune system.

PLATELETS: Responsible for blood clotting.

After talking about this for a while we decided to make some blood so we could create our own ‘under the microscope’ experience.

To do this we used the following:

Clear Bowls
Red Water Beads
Water
Dried Butter Beans
Yellow Food Colouring
White Sprinkles

We left the water beads soaking in a bowl of water, overnight. The next day I gave each of the kids a clear bowl and let them create their own blood. First we added some water and a tiny drop of food colouring – this gave us our plasma. We then added a few scoops of water beads (red blood cells). Next we threw in a small handful of dried butter beans (white blood cells), and then we added the sprinkles over the top to be our platelets. The kids loved observing and even sticking their hands into the ‘blood’ so that they could feel the water beads. This is a very sensory project and both my kids really enjoyed it.