ABC and 123: A Learning Collaborative: Experimenting with Water

Friday, August 28, 2009

Experimenting with Water

Welcome! New to ABC and 123?
Please check out our FAQ in the left sidebar.

Happy Friday!
Wishing you have oceans of fun with all these water experiements.

Make a sunset in a bottle
Objective: Kids will learn about liquid density in a hands-on way.
Materials: Jars, food coloring, water, cooking oil, rubbing alcohol, beads, glitter and action figures (optional) and hot glue gun (optional).

Create a Tornado Tube with the instructions from Kristi at Orange Juice.


Here is a fun science experiment from The Attached Mama involving cornstarch and water.
The science behind the experiment is described here.



The kids at Growing Up Our Style experimented with color while painting with ice cubes.

Adventures with Kids tested the properties of water while making a Special Soup.

Delightful Learning played with many different objects to determine whether they would float or sink. Sharon from Teaching Tiny Tots shares the step by step instructions for an experiement on How a Plant Absorbs Water.
One Busy Mama submitted her experiement, Will It Float?
Put together a homemade lava lamp with frozen water.
You freeze rainbow ice cubes (with foodcoloring). Then you just drop the ice cubes into a big jar of oil, as they float and melt it’s a beautiful color show and looks like a rainbow.

Ten Kids and A Dog submitted her link to 3 easy to implement experiements using water.


Joann and her children also had great experiements for their lesson on floating.


Absorption Experiment

Learning Objective: exploring properties of water; actively engages in hands-on science activities

Materials: ice cube tray, medicine dropper, cup of water, small piece of wood, facial tissue, tissue paper, writing paper, paper towel, Unifix cube (or anything plastic), cotton ball, small rock, sponge, aluminum foil, any other materials which will/will not absorb water.

Procedure: Have the child squeeze a few drops of water into each section of the ice cube tray using the medicine dropper. Provide them with a variety of materials for the experiment, some that will absorb water and some that will not. Hand the child one of the items and ask him/her to predict whether it will absorb water or not. The child will place the item in one of the sections of the ice cube tray to see which items absorb water and which do not.

1 comment: