If you are looking for fish science experiments for kids, I have some great science activities for you! Did you know a seahorse is a kind of fish? It doesn’t look like one does it?! But it is in fact a fish! The seahorse is one of the most interesting shaped fish, and it has some very interesting behaviors as well. In this post I will outline a science unit about seahorses that will teach kids about a few of these behaviors through fun hands-on experiments. Read on to find a fun science project for your homeschool or classroom!
Fun Fish Experiments for Kids: Super Seahorses
Let’s learn about seahorses! These fun fish experiments about seahorses are perfect for preschool aged children and older kids too. I would recommend these activities for children from about 4-8, so preschool through early elementary. They are a great way to help young children get excited about science! They only require a few simple materials and they are easy to prepare, which makes this a great science unit for busy homeschool families as well as the classroom.
Color of Camouflage
Did you know that seahorses can change color? They have special organs on their skin called chromatophores that contain different pigments. Each chromatophore has a little muscle that can expand or contract to show more or less of a certain color. By expanding or contracting their chromatophores, seahorses can choose what color to be. Why do you think seahorses would want to change color? Let’s do a simple science experiment to try to find out!
Hide the Seahorse
For this easy science experiment you will need:
- a somewhat stiff piece of clear plastic – I used a transparency sheet and actually printed the seahorse onto it with my printer, but you could also use a piece of a plastic container or a clear plastic divider from a binder and trace it on with a permanent marker
- the Seahorse printable (below)
- a black permanent marker
- a pair of scissors
Instructions:
- Print the seahorse printable either on paper or onto a transparency sheet
- Trace the seahorse onto the clear plastic sheet using a black permanent marker if you did not print it onto a transparency sheet
- Cut out the seahorse
- Instruct your child to close her eyes while you place the seahorse somewhere in plain sight, but where the seahorse can blend in with whatever is behind it. Have her open her eyes and look for the seahorse
This is one of the places that our seahorse was hidden. Pretty tricky, right?!
How long did it take you to spot the seahorse? Do you know now why the seahorse changes colors? That’s right, it changes colors in order to hide from fish that might eat it. This is called camouflage. Other fish swim away from predators, but camouflage helps the seahorse a lot because it cannot swim very fast (notice that it doesn’t have a regular fish shape – it has very small fins), so it has a hard time out-swimming predators.
Daddy Seahorse
Another really interesting thing about seahorses is that the male seahorses are the ones that take care of the eggs. The female sea horse lays her eggs in a special pouch that the male seahorse has. The eggs grow and develop into tiny seahorses, and when they are ready to come out, the male seahorse squeezes them out of his pouch. They are about the size of an eyelash when they are born, and they are fully formed seahorses. They immediately swim off to live on their own.
Fish Science Experiment for Kids – Make a Daddy Seahorse
Make a daddy seahorse! All you need for this science activity is:
- Seahorse with Babies printable (below)
- crayons, markers, or color pencils
- scissors
- glue stick or white glue
Instructions:
- Print out the Seahorse with Babies printable
- Color the seahorses and babies – keep in mind that two of the opposite seahorses will be attached to make the two sides of one seahorse
- Cut out the seahorses and the babies (I suggest cutting out the babies as a group – I don’t recommend trying to cut out each individual baby). This is a great opportunity for kids to practice those fine motor skills, but if you are doing this project with very young children you might need to help them with the cutting.
- Glue two of seahorse sides together at the head and the tail, leaving the belly free of glue
- Now you can put the baby seahorses in the pouch in the daddy seahorse’s belly
Snacky Seahorses
One more interesting thing about seahorses is that they do not have stomachs! Instead they have a digestive tube, and it isn’t very efficient at getting nutrients from the food that seahorses eat, so seahorses have to eat a lot! In fact, they eat between 30-50 times a day, which means they are pretty much eating constantly. They eat things like tiny shrimp and other small floating animals (zooplankton), and algae and other tiny floating plants (phytoplankton). Seahorses don’t have teeth, so they just suck their food through a little tube-like mouth and it goes right into their digestive tube.
Seahorse Slurp
This fun fish science experiment for kids will help children remember how seahorses eat.
For this science activity, you will need just a few simple supplies:
- a straw
- a plate
- something edible and very small and dry (I used sucanat. Some other possibilities are Rice Krispies, crushed cornflakes, or a candy like Nerds)
Instructions:
- sprinkle a little of the “fish food” item on the plate
- remind your students that seahorses do not have teeth, they just suck their food in through a mouth that is like a tube
- have the students try eating like a seahorse by sucking the food through the straw
My kids got a pretty big kick out of doing this. It was memorable for sure!
I hope you had fun and learned a lot about sea horses with this fun fish science experiment for kids!
Check out this book list for learning more about seahorses and other ocean animals:
You might also like this science unit about whales:
Thank you for joining us! I hope you come again soon!
