Silver Creek Academy Home School: MFW 1st Grade - Science

Science with Water - Water's Skin

The long awaited science day has finally come. God is amazingly good. Caleb was a little sad and droopy today. Even shed a few tears and I really wasn't sure what was wrong. So, I asked him, "how about a day of science." He was SO excited. It just so happened that our science lesson needed to take place after a rain shower. Last fall, we would have been in trouble. But, it just so happened we had a rain shower this morning. Perfect timing from our precious Father.

Here are the supplies we used for the science project today: A jar, money, spoon, dawn, straw, wire and as styrofoam plate. The idea was that the top of water tends to react as a layer of skin to the water beneath it. Even to the point that some things can float on that skin/surface.

First Caleb filled a jar to the top with water and placed, one at a time, coins into the jar until it bulged above the surface of the jar.

As in this picture....

We counted the coins and it took 28 coins - a variety of nickels, dimes, quarters, and pennies to over flow the jar.

Hard to see, but look close......even a needle can float on the skin of the water.

Dip a straw in some dishwashing liquid........and touch the surface of the water where the needle is floating......the needled immediately sinks to the bottom. The dishwashing liquid makes the waters' skin weaker so it stretches - - it becomes too stretchy and cannot hold up the needle.

We went outside to find some raindrops and look at how water collects in small droplets. Even small drops of water are protected and held together by the waters skin.

This part of the lesson lead to some giggles....Take your wire, and form it into a loop on one end. You know? Til it looks like those wire deals you use to color your Easter eggs?

Then blow you some bubbles....

Catch them again....

And make more....

Science with Water - Vanishing Water

I pulled my teacher card and we skipped the "vanishing water" lesson. We'd already done something like these previously - fill the jar, set it out by a window and watch the water level drop as it evaporates. We decided to keep moving ahead with things we hadn't done already.

Science with Water - Mixing

Here we were observing how water mixed well with many different things and not so well with others. We started with some jars partially filled with water. And then we pulled a variety of food items from our pantry to test. Before mixing each one, I would ask Caleb what he thought would happen. He only guessed wrong on one of them...I'll explain below.

Here we added regular table salt.

He guessed it would turn the water white, I figure cloudy is as close to white as you can get. ;o)

Then we tried some strawberry jello.

And yes, he said it was going to turn red.

This is where Caleb tripped up a little. Water and oil. He said they would mix together, but as you can see in this picture - - they do not. ;o)

Caleb branched out and wanted to see what would happen to a cough drop. Being that it was hard and not soft or powdery like the others, it really wasn't doing anything. So, we pulled it out and moved onto something else.

We stared in the pantry for a few minutes, but found ourselves in the laundry room. We decided to use some Borax. All my laundry detergent is liquid, but I have this one box of powder because Randy makes home made Gak sometimes with it. So, we pulled it out to test.