Recommended for elementary school students! Science fair topics & craft ideas

camp

Summer vacation means camping! ② Breakfast by the campfire

Cooking a meal in the mountains, listening to your favorite music, and gazing at the stars.

Is it really okay for an event to be this wonderful? Yes—it’s camping.

Cooking together as a family and living in a space different from the everyday will surely feel fresh, and you’ll probably have conversations you don’t usually get to have.

Let’s all think about what kinds of dishes we can make without using electricity or gas!

A coin disappears!? A mysterious piggy bank

Coins disappear!? Let's make a mysterious piggy bank [Summer Vacation Craft]. Easy craft with 100-yen shop materials: magic piggy bank, enchanted piggy bank, magic money box.

The charm of a piggy bank is that your money accumulates little by little—seeing it pile up and feeling it get heavier brings joy.

This is a curious piggy bank that deliberately takes away that charm: the coins you put in seem to disappear.

The piggy bank you’ll make is a simple one with a window so you can see inside, and it’s structured so that you can also see a decorative pattern within.

Before closing the lid with a coin slot, you install a mirror to divide the interior into two blocks, and that’s how you create the illusion of the coins vanishing.

It’s important to assemble it while carefully considering the placement of the interior patterns and the angle of the mirror so that nothing feels out of place.

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kappamaki

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Baskin-Robbins-style ice cream

[100-yen store clay] Baskin-Robbins-style ice cream

Baskin-Robbins ice cream is said to be appealing for its wide variety of flavors, and its colorful appearance makes it look delicious, too.

This is about recreating that colorful ice cream using clay.

The process is simple: mix paint into the clay to color it, then cut the colored clay and combine the pieces to match the flavor you want to make.

Once you’ve shaped it into a ball, use a toothbrush or a toothpick to create a bumpy texture to make it look more like real ice cream.

Finally, put the ice cream pieces into a cup and you’re done—using a real cup is also recommended.

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kappamaki

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cardboard picture frame

[Cardboard Art / DIY] A Picture-Frame-Style Frame Made from Cardboard

Let’s try making a lovely frame to display photos, certificates, and commemorative items from marathons or volunteer activities—using cardboard.

Imagine a square frame measuring 30 cm on each side.

First, secure the space to hold the photo or certificate, then create beautiful embellishments around it.

Ideas are endless: a whirlwind-style frame with circular motifs, a mosaic look combining triangles and quadrilaterals, or a design like torn-paper art using colorful pieces of cardboard.

It’s also worth noting that simply combining gold and silver paint can make cardboard look metallic.

Show off your sense of style to the fullest!

Tapioca drink with tape

[DIY] Make Viral Nano Tape Bubbles: How to Make a Tapioca Boba Tea Squishy — Making a Tapioca Drink Milk Carton Squishy with Tape

Why not try making a boba drink using clear gel tape, a craft item that’s been very popular lately? It’s a perfect DIY idea for girls who love stylish projects.

Its charm lies in how realistic it looks, with a finish that resembles food samples.

The method is simple: use liquid laundry starch (or glue) and borax to make a milk tea–colored slime, create a milk-carton-shaped container with gel tape, and add black deodorizing beads to mimic tapioca pearls and square acrylic pieces to mimic ice, then combine everything with the milk tea slime.

It’s a fun craft with a satisfyingly tactile feel that you’ll want to touch forever.

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utatane

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Newton’s cradle

[Science Experiment] Perfect for Independent Research! A Newton’s Cradle You Can Make Using Only 100-Yen Shop Items [Budget-Friendly Craft]

Have you ever heard of Newton’s cradle? It’s a device where about five small steel balls are suspended on strings in a row.

When you lift and release one ball at the end, only the ball on the opposite end is knocked outward.

This is related to the conservation of momentum and the conservation of mechanical energy.

Let’s write a report summarizing the results of changing conditions—for example, what happens if you lift and release two balls instead of one, or what happens if you change the size of the balls.

Another nice point is that after the experiments, the Newton’s cradle you made can be displayed as interior decor.

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Hane Keisuke

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Plastic Bottle Cap Calendar

Easy! DIY Blackboard Calendar Made with Bottle Caps! [CAINZ DIY STYLE]

In the old days, when the year-end approached, we used to receive calendars from the local shopping street and neighborhood stores, and our house would overflow with more calendars than we needed.

Now it’s an era where we buy calendars to suit our purposes.

For a summer project, you can make a perpetual calendar using plastic bottle caps—depending on your ideas, it could turn out to be a wonderful calendar.

The materials are a corkboard, pushpins, and plastic bottle caps.

The basic setup is to fix the days of the week—Sun, Mon, Tue, and so on—on the corkboard, and then line up bottle caps labeled with the dates.

Think of hooking them onto large-headed pushpins.

You’re free to decorate the bottle caps with beads or even make them light up with miniature bulbs—the ideas are limitless.

Take the whole summer to create a lovely calendar!