Basic Lab Safety for Kids

All of the materials that we use in our STEM Club are common household materials and are relatively safe, however if you teach proper lab safety from the beginning kids will then be able to work with more hazardous chemicals in their middle school and high school science labs with ease.

Important Safety Materials

Safety Glasses – safety glasses are one of the most important safety materials in a lab/experimentation environment. Glasses help to keep harmful chemicals and broken materials out of your eyes. Most lab safety glasses are plastic in nature in order to prevent them from breaking and sending shards into your eyes. They can come in many sizes and hues (with certain ones being tinted for working outdoors or with intense light sources). If you are starting your own STEM Club make sure that these are purchased in kids sizes (kids sizes can easily be found on the internet) and that you have enough for every student that is working on the experiments. We recommend that every kid and adult wear safety glasses when they are in the lab environment.

Gloves – gloves can be important safety equipment when you are working with hazardous materials, this could mean strong acids or bases, or materials that can cause harm when in contact with the skin. For the STEM Club we are building, the gloves are more as a precaution for kids with sensitive skin. The strongest acid being used is soda and the strongest base is laundry detergent, neither of which is particularly harmful if on the skin but getting used to wearing gloves in the lab can keep yours kids safe as they move on in their scientific careers. It can also help keep little hands out of little mouths as they get reagents on their hands and have that overwhelming urge to lick the reagents off.

Lab coats – lab coats are nice when you are trying to keep materials and reagents off of your clothes and exposed skin. For an elementary school STEM Club using lab coats can be a bit overkill as kids grow so fast that they may grow out of their lab coat in a semester (i.e. only wear it 10-15 times and with how expensive lab coats can be that seems quite expensive. What we recommend is to have kids practice safe techniques and if there are any weeks where you may be working with reagents that could stain their clothes (food dye for instance) they advise their parents to dress them in grungy clothes for that day.

Basic Safety Guidelines

Measuring Reagents (are materials used in a reaction, for STEM Club they are the materials added to a cup or bag that when put together create some sort of change) – when measuring reagents the kids will be allowed to determine the amounts they wish to add. The best way we have found for the kids to be in control of their experiments but also not go overboard is to give them a limited amount of reagent. For instance if you are doing a buoyancy experiment and they need salt for the experiment only give them a small bag of salt that can then be measured out using a spoon. This way they are in control of the amount of salt that they add at each step but cannot add so much that they have salt with a little water added.

Mixing Reagents – Although everything is safe that is being used in these experiments the goal in mixing is to teach the kids to mix in a closed system, i.e. in the cup they are using or a bag they are using. Give them stir sticks or sealable bags that can be used to mix the reagents. This way the kids learn how to keep their hands out of direct contact with their reagents and teaches them how to limit the contamination of their experiment.

Reagents are for experimenting not for eating – one of the great and horrible things that comes from experimenting with young kids is that many of the reagents you are using as edible and safe for kids. This means they most likely will not get hurt working with things like flour but it also means they will be more tempted to stick them in their mouths. If you know the kids will not keep the reagents out of their mouths make them a deal, experiment first then eat the leftovers. This is really nice to do when making bridges out of gum drops and toothpicks. The kids can have fun experimenting and then they can eat the materials that were not used in the experiment, this will teach them there are experimenting reagents and normal materials that can be used for eating.

Smelling Reagents – in a lab you learn to waft (gently pass an object or reagent from one side under your noise to the other side while keeping the object a few inches from your noise and not inhaling the full strength of the reagent but a dispersed sample) a reagent to smell it. When working in STEM Club the kids will all be taught to waft reagents this can help the kids to learn safe smelling techniques that can help them be safe at home as well (for instance when smelling the acetone in nail polish remover when cleaning their nails).

Reagents are for experimenting not for playing – this means that you use them to follow a procedure in your experiment but do not throw, play or mess with. Even simple salt when tossed at someone can go up their nose and make their sinuses hurt or could go in their eyes making eyes sting.