Having Fun With Water

Things are super busy right now.  I have to admit with all of our Christmas decorations up and all of the upcoming events that we are planning for it is hard for ALL OF US to keep focused on school.  But we are doing the best we can :-)  We are not getting as in-depth on some of the science portions of our curriculum right now..but we are making sure that we are giving our reading, writing and math lessons the focus they need :-)

In the curriculum for the water lesson they mentioned a book entitled "Splash! All About Baths".  I actually found this book for very cheap on Amazon (a used library copy) so decided to go ahead and purchase it.  I am glad I did.  We were able to get most of the water experiments that were mentioned in the curriculum done while we were reading this book - in one school session!!  And we had a blast with it!  Here are some picture highlights from that session.

The book talked about water having no shape so we poured water into different shaped containers to see how it became the shape of a container.  We then took small blocks and put them in the same containers and noticed how their shape did not change.

The book talked about the water taking up space.  We made a bathtub for our little Tad leapfrog and noticed how when we placed him in his tub the water level rose.

 The book talked about how some things float and some things sink.  So we experimented to see what would float and what would sink.

The book also talked about water vapors and gave an idea of an experiment of putting a mirror in a refrigerator and then taking it out and breathing on it to see the water vapor.  It was cold enough this day that we just had to place the mirror outside for a few minutes (and as you can see from Seth's  sweatshirt it was pretty cold in the schoolroom as well...we are still trying to figure out how to get that room warm! I think we need a bigger heater!)

At the firs of last week we put water in two jars and marked the levels.  We then put a lid on only one jars.  We then observed a few days later the water levels (and due to the cooler temps not much had evaporated from the open jar...but at least some did :-) )

We then took those jars of water and added salt to one and oil to other and observed how the salt dissolved but that the the water and oil did not mix.

Look at Seth's face.  He really wanted that oil and water to mix!  He tried really hard...but of course to no avail :-)

We are doing insects this week (I HATE BUGS!)  It is going to be an interesting week :-)