Children of all ages love chemistry, especially if they are able to do chemistry experiments. Thankfully there are a lot of different chemistry experiments that you can do while you are homeschooling your children.

One of the first experiments that most people learn about in their chemistry class is the difference between physical and chemical changes. For instance, a physical change occurs whenever an object's shape changes. An example of this is when you wad up a piece of paper. When you light this wad of paper on fire, you have a chemical change. This is because you are rearranging the atoms that use to be the molecules that made up the paper into other molecules (i.e. carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ash, etc.). You can easily tell if you have a chemical change because the object will change color, give off light, gets cold or gets warm. Some quick examples of physical changes include tearing cloth, rolling dough, stretching rubber bands, eating a banana or blowing bubbles.

The following are some experiments that you can do which demonstrate the aforementioned chemical changes. For these experiments you will want to cover a table with a plastic tablecloth. You will also need water, vinegar, baking soda, washing soda, rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, citric acid, aluminum sulfate, a clear liquid dish soap such as Ivory and a head of red cabbage. Your goal is to find the reactions that generate the most heat, absorb the most heat and have very impressive reactions. Please note that even though the chemicals that you are using are not harmful to your skin, they can cause your skin to dry out and itch. For this reason you may want to wear latex gloves and safety goggles. Remember, if you are unsure about an experiment you should not do it.

You may be surprised to hear that you need a head of red cabbage. However, you should know that red cabbage juice has anthocyanin in it. This is an excellent indicator for the experiments that you are about to do.

Tell your child that certain flowers like hydrangeas turn blue in acidic soil and pink in basic soil. Through this experiment your child will understand why this happens.

Now, here are the steps that you are going to need to take:

1.Coarsely chop the head of red cabbage.

2.Boil the pieces of cabbage in a pot full of water for 5 minutes.

3.Remove all of the pieces of cabbage and save the purple liquid as this will act as your indicator. Once you add this indicator to the various substances that you have gathered together, you will see such colors as hot pink, tangerine orange, sunshine yellow, emerald green, ocean blue and velvet purple.

4.Put the red cabbage water into a bottle by itself. You will want to only use drops of this so make sure that you can use a bulb syringe in whatever you are placing this liquid into.

5.Place the alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, water, vinegar and dish soap into easy-to-pour containers.

6.Set out some small bowls or zipper bags of the powders .

7.Allow your child to mix things up, including the indicator.

8.Once your child has had some time to mix these things up, they will start to ask you questions. You can also allow them to test the temperatures and take note of which ones are hot or cold.