Water Experiments

I was recently turned on to the Let's Try It Science books by Seymour Simon and Nicole Fauteux. I am hooked! These are great picture books for primary age children that ask science related questions and then have the child "try it out" to answer those questions. It is a great way to introduce the scientific method for little ones. They have three in the series so far, one for water, air and bridges. I decided to start with water since for once we have sunny enough day to put some water in the kiddie pool!

The first question is how much water it would take to fill the pool. The experiment is to pick a container ("A" chose 2 qt. juice container) and start filling the pool. First he had to guess how many containers it would take. "A" chose nine! Hmmm, it took about 3x that amount. Boy was he surprised!

Next, the book has children pick the tallest container and the widest. Which one holds more water? He thought a 2 liter soda bottle would hold more than a gallon milk jug. Wrong again buddy. I then picked two half gallon items of different shapes. This time he thought the wider one would hold more water. He found it interesting that they held the same amount. After that he had to make a line of containers in the order he thought would hold the most to least amount of water. He couldn't understand that two containers the same height would hold different amounts!

Yup they hold the same amount!

Wait but they are the same height!?! (not a flattering pic)

Finally it was the experiments "A" had been waiting for-floating! First, he found heavy and light things to see if they would float. What about if you take a sinker and put it on a make shift boat out of aluminum foil? I don't know if he understood that it spread the weight of the heavier object over more space and that is why it floated, but he sure had fun. What happens when the aluminum foil is made small? What happens if things that float fill with water? These are questions we answered and more...who knew science could be so fun!

Different sinkers and floater. Notice monster truck sunk.

Now the monster truck floats!

Had to make dino float like in the book

"B" had to get in on the action too!

Pin It