Water Evaporation Experiment

What you need:

  • Find lids from various containers. Try to find lids of various sizes, some deep lids, bottle caps, and low lids like one from a play dough canister.
  • Other materials to see if you can adjust the lids that are alike.
  • Tape

How to do it:

Fill each lid with the same amount of water.  For example, 10 ml.

You can modify containers slightly to see how the top will affect rate of evaporation. You can cover with foil. Or cover and then poke small holes. Or cover with mesh. Or…

Ask the children what they think on from which lid they think water will evaporate more quickly.

Then just wait for the result.

If you like make a stop-motion or time lapse movie to capture the process.

Catch

Objective: Recognize visual speech patterns; compare numbers to determine the larger value and associate number names, quantities and written numbers.

Materials: Cards with different ways of representing numbers, such as numbers, dots, dice, shapes, etc.

Number of players: 2

Instructions:

  1. Divide the cards evenly and place them face up in a pile in front of them.
  2. The game is played in rounds. In each round:
    a. Turn the card over and say the number on the card.
    b. Players compare the numbers to see who has the highest value.
    c. The player with the highest value ”catches” the other card and places it on a rubbish heap.
    When all cards are played, players count their cards in the rubbish pile. This step can be skipped if you want to avoid the competition situation.

Variant:

  • The players compare cards and the player with the lowest value wins the round.
  • Play add-catch with two cards and the one with the highest amount wins the round.

How Well Do You Wash Your Hands?

Procedure

  1. Cover both of your hands in paint, as if you were using hand lotion. Make sure to cover the backs of your hands, in between your fingers, and around your fingernails.
  2. Hold your hands out and let the paint dry for a three or four minutes.
  3. Rinse your hands briefly with just warm water. How much paint is left on your hands?
  4. Rub your hands together briefly under running water. How much paint is left on your hands now?
  5. Use some soap, and count to 5 while washing your hands. Now how much paint is left?
  6. Continue to use soap, and wash your hands for another 15 seconds. Examine your hands.

Are certain parts of your hands cleaner than others? Where is there still paint left on your hands? What can you do to improve your hand washing?

What Happened?

You probably found that rinsing, or even scrubbing, your hands with only water did a poor job of removing the paint. Soap helps break up the paint and other dirt on your hands, making it easier to remove, along with germs. But even with soap, you have to do a good job washing your hands to remove all the paint. This includes washing them for more than just a few seconds, and getting into all the nooks and crannies where the paint (and germs) can hide.

Where does the sound come from?

Let one child at a time close their eyes, shake the container near one ear, the other ear, or at the neck of the child. Ask the child to tell you where the sound came from!
It is important that the rest of the group of children is as quiet as they can when performing this experiment, otherwise it will be difficult to hear the Sound!

Is sound heard everywhere?
Sound is conducted differently in different materials. That sound is heard even under water, you learn that when you dare to have your ears below the water surface, but that phenomenon can also be detected through a plastic container.
Ask the children (one at a time) to put one ear against a wooden object, and hold the other ear shut. Tap the wooden object lightly with the pen. Can it be heard? Continue with the other materials.
The children who dare, can lower their ears below the water surface in the pool if you bathe, then you tap with the pen against the pool edge.

Build a Sound-Memory

Material

  • A number of cans or containers that do not have to be the same. Film cans, plastic drawers, the small containers that are inside chocolate eggs, pipes that have been effervescent tablets.
  • Things to fill the jars with: popcorn, dry white beans, rice, sand, sugar cubes, screws, gravel, nuts, eraser pieces, etc.

Remember to ”listen off” to the sounds so that the different things do not sound too similar.

Game Rules:

  • Place the different containers on the table.
  • Decide who will start the game.
  • Each player may try two containers at a time.
  • If the sound sounds alike, the player can take the containers as a pair.

Most sound-pairs win!

Game variant:

Bring an odd container, with an odd sound, and play with it as a ”Joker”. Is it really the container with the odd sound in it that is left over at the end?

It can be an advantage if the containers can be opened when the game is over, to see if there really were similar things inside. The sounds will be different if you put popcorn in a plastic container or in a paper box, for example.

Foil boat challenge

Foil boatYour challenge is to build a boat that can hold the most small coins before it sinks.

YOU WILL NEED:

  • Large bowl of water
  • 30 plus small coins per boat
  • Aluminum Foil

HOW TO SET UP YOUR BUOYANCY EXPERIMENT

  1. Fill your bowl to 3/4 with water.
  2. Cut two 8″ squares of aluminum foil for each boat. Then form a small boat from the aluminium foil of one of them .
  3. Place 15 coins on the other square of tin foil (not the boat) and have the kids ball it up and place it in the water. What happens? (It sinks!)
  4. Place your boat in the water and see if it floats.  Reshape if it doesn’t! Then slowly add the coins one at a time. How many pennies can you count before it sinks?
  5. Extend the challenge by rebuilding your boat to see if it can hold even more pennies.

Scientific Explanation:

You are in this experiment working with Archimede Principle – The lifting force of the water is always as great as the weight of the water that the object in the water displaces.

This experiment came from LittleBinsLittleHands.

Forms of Expression for Natural Science

Skolverket.seThe Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) has a good article about different ways of communicating about and documenting scientific experiences.

The article gives down-to-earth tips on how to present what you come up with in different ways, for example as a photo book (Book Creator works well for that), or make a blog (maybe try AudioMemos to create and SoundCloud to upload). Or why not do an advertising campaign (maybe use Pupet Pals to make small movies, or iMotion if you want to use green-screen technology). Or maybe even a blog? (Easy to do on Pedanet, or WordPress)

Working with learning through a presentation deepens the thinking about what they have learned and anchors it better in the memory, that you can also connect a little digital technology makes it a more exciting and develops their abilities in the digital field.

I recommend that you take a look at ”Expression forms for Discoverers” on the National Agency for Education’s page. (Note: the article is in Swedish.)

Stargazing in the daytime

If you enjoy watching star constellations with the kids, it can be difficult when they are in kindergarten / preschool during the day as it is often bright (unless you live far north want to say).

Then you can take advantage of the SkyView Lite app that shows where the constellations should appear if it was dark. It is displayed on top of the image the camera takes from real sky in what is called augmented reality.

The app can be found here: https://blog.edu.turku.fi/iktpedagogik/2020/07/02/skyview-lite/

Create Your Own Underwater Vulcanoe

What you need to do your own underwater vulcanoe is (maybe not as good looking as the real Hawaiian below):

  • A large container
  • A glass / small vase / beaker, preferably with a small neck or collar for easier attachment of threads
  • Yarn / string or steel wire
  • Water
  • Food Colour

Tie the cord / steel wire into the collar of the small container. In the large container you pour cold water. In the glass / vase / beaker you pour as hot water as you can (think of the risk of explosion with boiling water in glass!) And color the warm water with the food colour. Immerse the small beaker in the large container and see what happens!

The hot water is lighter than the cold water, and therefore wants up to the surface to lie there. It flows out of the smaller beaker to reach the top of the large container.

Underwater vulcanoe.