Sink and "F"loat - Science for 4 year olds.
So our science in my class tends to be simple enough for four year olds, for obvious reasons! We do science once a week and it coincides with the letter of the alphabet for that week. Yesterday was the letter "F". We had a lot of fun with finding out what things sink and what things float! I am amazed at the difference in children and their methods of deduction. I tried to start out by saying that if something has no air in it and is heavy it will sink, but there are things that look solid that have tiny air pockets in them etc etc. So, they knew that the sponge would float, but they had to be convinced that a rock (porous) would float. First we had a regular rock then I passed out the porous rock. It was very light, but some still were sure it would sink. It was a rock after all! We also had fun with a little boat (all believed it would float), then we added little plastic piggies into the boat. The question being, "how many piggies will fit in the boat, and how many will it take to sink the boat?" There were quite a few piggies in the boat before the weight of one side made it tip over and sink. It was a fun time!
2 comments:
Then, no doubt, you explained when an object displaces water equal to its own mass, it floats. Further, if its mass is such that its volume will not displace enough water, it has a density greater than 1 and will, in fact, sink.
Another fun activity would be only give them things that float that start with the letter 'F' and things that sink that start with the letter 'S', then see if any of them draw the wrong conclusion.
For some reason my kids don't ask me for help with their homework anymore
Yeah, after that explanation, I would get, "Mrs. Wyckhouse, guess what? My brother can burp real loud!"
They tend to come up with stuff like that when they get really really bored with what you are saying. There is a reason I teach pre-school. It is simple and fun!
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