Isaac Newton Activities for Kids
Light, Color, and Gravity… Oh My!
Most of us hear the name Isaac Newton and immediately think of an apple falling on someone’s head. Or maybe the Laws of Motion… something about prisms… but the real Isaac Newton was far more interesting, and far more complicated.
He wasn’t just a scientist. He was a mathematician, astronomer, inventor, alchemist, and obsessive note-taker who spent his entire life trying to understand how the world works. He asked big questions long before anyone had the tools to answer them.
You don’t need a lab or fancy supplies to explore Newton’s ideas, just light, gravity, a prism if you have one, and the same curiosity he had hundreds of years ago.
If you’ve been looking at a way to introduce some of Newton’s discoveries, maybe use his birthday, January 4th, to have some science fun! Let’s celebrate Isaac Newton with some simple Isaac Newton activities and a peek into the life of a man whose ideas still guide science today.
So… Who Was Isaac Newton?
He was born on January 4, 1643, premature and not expected to survive. He was also born three months after his father passed away. Newton’s childhood was far from gentle. His mother left him for years after she got remarried, and he was raised by grandparents. Newton was shy, lonely, and often unhappy, but he spent time noticing the world around him.
He watched shadows, raindrops, falling apples, moonlight, colors, and motion. He sketched, questioned, built little machines, and filled notebooks with ideas that no one around him understood yet.
A Few Newton facts:
-
He made some of his biggest discoveries during a plague shutdown, when Cambridge closed and he had to study from home. These include some of the big ideas below!
-
He invented the first practical reflecting telescope.
-
He was VERY protective of his ideas especially around fellow scientist Robert Hooke, who often challenged him.
-
He did get along much better with Edmond Halley (yes, Halley’s Comet), who encouraged him when he wanted to quit.
-
He was brilliant… and honestly a little grumpy.
Newton didn’t always handle conflict well, he had a difficult relationship with his mother and stepfather, he was a loner, didn’t trust most people, feuded with Robert Hooke to the point off getting rid of all of Hooke’s paintings after his death (we don’t know what Robert Hooke looks like today because of Newton)… and that’s actually an important lesson.
Isaac Newton shows everyone that brilliance and emotional skills aren’t the same thing, and that being curious matters just as much as learning how to treat people with respect.
About That Apple…
Did an apple hit him on the head? Probably not, at least not the dramatic way the story is usually told. Newton did tell the story himself later in life. He said he watched an apple fall and started wondering why objects always fall straight down, not sideways or upward.
So, while the apple-bonk is mostly myth, the curiosity behind it is real… and easy to bring into your home learning.
⭐ Let’s Look at Newton’s Big Ideas
🌈 Newton and Light
Before Newton, people thought prisms “colored” light. Newton proved prisms separate light… white light is actually made of many colors. This changed the way artists used colors in paintings.
🍎 Newton and Gravity
He didn’t “discover” gravity, in fact Galileo and da Vinci dabbled at the concept before Newton, however, Newton explained it in a way no one had before. Everything with mass pulls on everything else… apples, planets, moons, your pencil, and even you!
🚀 Newton and Motion
His three laws of motion still explain almost everything that moves.
- Everything keeps doing what it’s doing unless something stops or changes it.
- The harder you push, the farther/faster it goes.
- Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
➕ Newton and Math
Isaac Newton is often credited with inventing calculus, but the real story is a little more interesting. Newton did develop a powerful new kind of math in the 1660s, but he called it the Method of Fluxions. Instead of the symbols kids learn in school today (dx, dy, integrals), Newton used dots over variables to show how things were changing over time. His math was built on motion, like how something moves, speeds up, or slows down, and this made perfect sense for someone studying planets.
Around the same time, another mathematician, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, created his own version of calculus and published it first. This comes back to Newton’s trust issues when publishing his work. Newton didn’t want to share his ideas with anyone. Anyway, Leibniz’s notation became the standard, which is why students everywhere learn Leibniz-style calculus in school today.
Newton’s version is still used today in physics and engineering whenever we talk about speed, acceleration, or anything that changes over time. That simple dot notation you sometimes see… like ẋ or ẍ is Newton’s original idea, still doing its job centuries later.
If your kids ever bring home equations with tiny dots above letters, now you know they’re using a little piece of Newton’s own math language.
🔎 Easy Isaac Newton Experiments for Kids:
Try one or try all, each one matches something Newton noticed long before modern science existed.
🌈 Make a Rainbow with a Prism
Watching the colors spill across the floor was the moment everything clicked, my son could see what Newton discovered!
You’ll Need:
- A prism
- Flashlight or sunlight
- White paper (we use our white door)
What To Do:
- Shine light through the prism.
- Catch the rainbow on your white paper.
- Move the prism slowly and watch the spectrum stretch and shift.
What’s Happening:
White light contains ALL the colors. The prism bends each wavelength differently, splitting the light into a rainbow you can actually see.
🍎 Gravity Drop Test
You’ll Need:
-
Two objects of different weight (a book and a pencil work great)
What To Do:
- Hold both objects at the same height.
- Drop them at the same time.
- Watch how they usually hit the ground together.
What’s Actually Happening:
Gravity pulls on everything…big things, small things, heavy things, light things, but we also live inside an atmosphere. This means we’re surrounded by air even though we can’t see it.
- Air = tiny particles
- Tiny particles = friction
- Friction slows things down a little.
Heavier objects push through the air more easily. Lighter objects get “held up” more. This is why a book and pencil fall almost together, but a feather floats, and a paper airplane glides instead of drops straight down
If you could do this experiment on the Moon, where there is almost no atmosphere, everything drops at the exact same speed, even a feather and a bowling ball. NASA actually did this test on the Moon, and both objects hit the ground at the same moment… watch that NASA test here!
So, when kids see the book and feather land at almost the same time, they’re seeing how gravity works, and how our atmosphere changes things just a little.
🎈Balloon Rocket
You’ll Need:
- Balloon
- String
- Straw
- Tape
What To Do:
- Slide the straw onto the string.
- Stretch the string across the room.
- Blow up a balloon, tape it to the straw, and let go.
What’s Happening:
Air rushes out of the balloon in one direction → the balloon zooms forward in the opposite direction. This is Newton’s Third Law: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
📄 Free Printable: My Science Log
If your kids enjoy hands-on science, I put together a one-page Science Log that works for these Isaac Newton activities and for my Ben Franklin post, Penguin STEM post, and all our other STEM posts throughout the year.
👉 Download the free Science Log here
🍎 Newton-Themed Snack: Triple Apple Oatmeal Muffins
Because apples and Newton go hand-in-hand, even if the apple didn’t hit Newton’s head.
If you want to end your science time with something tasty, we love making these Triple Apple Oatmeal Muffins. They’re simple, warm, and a fun nod to the most famous Newton legend.
👉 Head over to the Triple Apple Oatmeal Muffins post
They make a great read-aloud snack, breakfast option, or afternoon treat while you talk about light, color, and gravity.
🛒 Build a Newton Learning Basket
If you want to dive deeper, I put together a small Newton Amazon list with:
- Prisms
- Child-friendly telescopes
- Light/color kits
- Newton books for every age
- Fun extras (rainbow makers, classroom prisms, STEM toys)
And if you want general supplies for future experiments, this list is our go-to:
👉 Homeschool and Curious Kids Science Must-Haves
⭐ Isaac Newton Learning Pack – Coming Soon!
I’m currently building a printable Isaac Newton Learning Pack to go with these Isaac Newton activities. It will include:
- kid-friendly biography + timeline
- “What I Learned” Newton mini-booklet
- light + prism notebooking pages
- simple gravity/force activity pages
- quote coloring sheets
- quick science prompts inspired by Newton’s biggest ideas
If you want to be the first to know when the Newton pack is ready (and get a launch-day discount), you can sign up below. I’ll send a quick email as soon as it’s live.
👉 Notify me when the Isaac Newton Learning Pack is ready
💙 Final Thoughts on Isaac Newton
Newton wasn’t perfect, in fact, he was far from it. He was brilliant, curious, anxious, solitary, and sometimes unkind, but his ideas changed how we see the world… and his questions are questions kids still ask today.
Learning at home doesn’t have to be complicated. A prism, a couple of household objects, an apple muffin, and a random moment… can spark real understanding.
If you try any of these Isaac Newton activities, I’d love to hear about it. Comment below or head over to Instagram or Facebook, share your pics, and tag me @bemandfam… I’d love to see them!
Here’s to raising curious kids… one little experiment at a time. 💙
BEM and Fam 🙂
👉 Save this for later
🛒PS. This post has some affiliate links, read more about those here.
