Junior Kindergarten: Science

Density: part 3

In order to explore a little more about density we did the Salt Water Egg experiment. Our students observed that the egg placed in saltwater floated and the one in pure water didn't.

Because saltwater is denser than fresh water, the egg does not end up sinking like it usually does!

Mrs. Barreto and s. Holdal

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Density: part 2

Our students liked so much the experiment with density that we had to repeat it. This time we made it even more fun. We added two extra ingredients: dish soap and syrup.

In addition, to make it more interesting we told the tale around Archimedes’ “Eureka!” moment, when he realized some principles of density while taking a bath.

After that we read the book Mr. Archimedes Bath by Pamela Allen and did some demonstration on over floating objects in a cup.

Mrs. Barreto and Ms. Holdal

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Density: part 1

More recently we have been playing with density too. Each of our students put together in an empty water bottle, water, oil and food colouring.

After that they put some little pieces of straws and beads to observe if they would sink or float. They found that the pieces of straw floated in the oil, but the beads sank on the oil but floated in the water. This is so cool!

After that they decorated a little more their bottles adding lots of glitter in it.

Mrs. Barreto and Ms. Holdal

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Sink and Float: part 2

In this activity our students made out some boat s of tin foil. To each student was given a piece of tin foil and they were instructed to design a boat that would be able to hold animals (pebbles) of their choice.

One of the boats carried more than 40 penguins on it! What a great boat!

In this activity our students had the opportunity to explore properties of sink and float and learn more about concepts of heavy and light.

But, most important of all, they are learning that science is fun!

Mrs. Barreto and Ms. Holdal

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Sink and Float: part 1

After watching The Fish Museum our students played with some objects discovering if they sink or float.

Following the some initial exploration, our students had to predict and then observe, checking their predictions, if objects would sink or float. We had a great time together thinking about it.

They did observations and tested hypotheses!

You can also watch the video The Fish Museum at Peep and the Big Wide World website.

Mrs. Barreto and Ms. Holdal

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Changing Over Time
A few weeks ago we watched the cartoon “Finders Keepers” during our computer lab time. In this video Quack finds a “perfect” slice of bread that he wants to save for a rainy day. When the perfect day comes, Quack’s slice of bread is moldy and he can’t eat it anymore. After watching this cartoon we decided to conduct an experiment to see how food can change over time. We separated slices of bread, apple, kiwi, carrot and cheese. We kept some pieces on a plate, uncovered, and some in a plastic bag.

Every day we examined the food using our eyes, our noses and our hands.

We observed that everything smelled good as we started the experiment. The slices of bread were soft, the apple was crunchy and the kiwi smelled great. After the first day we could easily observe that the uncovered bread wasn’t soft anymore, but the bread in the plastic bag was. We wondered why this happened. We also observed that the colour of the apple had changed very fast too.

After two days we observed that some of the items did not smell very good anymore, but there weren’t any physical transformations yet.

After days three and four we observed that the kiwi and the apple, respectively, had changed in shape, and were smelling very bad.

After a week, we saw mold in all of our pieces of food except from the uncovered bread and the carrot.

“A huge part of science is awe, wonder and delight in the natural world, and an appreciation of the beauty, order, and complexity of all its forms.”

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More fun with Mr. Schroeder. Making “Bubble Snakes”

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On the 24^th of September we went to Mr. Schroeder’s Science Lab (within our school) for a fun science experiment. There, we made “Elephant Toothpaste” using hydrogen peroxide, liquid detergent, food colouring and potassium iodate.

As you can see, our children had lots of fun!

Mrs. Barreto and Ms. Holdal

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In this space you will find some of math and science activities we will be doing in our classroom; some cool ideas about math or some interesting websites where you can find more about math facts, games and activities.Let's have fun together!
So far we have been doing some interesting activities related to the human body and our senses.During the past weeks. We have been talking about the skeleton and learning names for some parts of our body.

We also learned about the importance and structure of our neck; we saw some pictures of children from other countries that carry things on their heads, using the strength of their necks.