Home School Science Activity for All Ages and Grades: Fingerprints

One part of science is the human body and for children this can be a fascinating subject. One part of the human body that is unique to an individual is fingerprints. I found this website that showed how to create fingerprints for kids to study and I found it to be a little too complicated for my household so I tried my own way and found that it worked really well. My kids now understand what fingerprints look like and how they differ from each other. Even my three year old can do this with some help from me therefore even if your child is preschool age you can still include them in this activity.

What You Will Need:

1-2 Packages of Hot Chocolate Mix

1 Medium Make-up Brush

1 Paper or plastic plate

1 Drinking glass per person

1 Sheet of White Construction Paper per person

Scotch Tape

First take and empty out the hot chocolate mix onto the paper or plastic plate. Next you want to make sure there are no lumps in the powdery mix. Once you have that set up you will have each person take and grab their drinking glass. Make sure you use glass and not plastic cups. Once each person has grabbed their glass have them take and lightly dust the hot chocolate powder over their fingerprints with the make up brush. Once the print is visible you will take the scotch tape and lift the print off the glass and then place the tape onto the white construction paper. Try to get a print for all four fingers and the thumb.

Once you have all the prints on each person let each person use the magnifying glass to examine their prints. To show how fingerprints differ let each person look at their print card and another person's print card to see the difference. If you only have one child that you are home schooling then you will need to do a print card for yourself so that your child can see the difference.

For kids grades 3^rd and up you can take the print cards to a new level by utilizing a window in your house. What you do is have each person touch the window with their fingers. Then one person will dust the window with the hot chocolate powder and use the scotch tape to lift the fingerprints. The prints will be placed on a new piece of construction paper. Then cross referencing these prints with each person's print card let the kids try and figure out which fingerprints belong to who.