Floating/Sinking Materials Experiment

In preschool, we did an experiment using materials! We filled a bowl with water and another bowl with different materials. We explained that we would be experimenting with these materials to see if they would float or sink, and that we would each take a turn to put an item in the water. As the children took their turn, we asked them what material they think it is that they have chosen, if it was heavy or light and if they thought it would sink or float. Once the children answered, they dropped their item in the water and said whether is sank or float. When a child picked up the sponge, we spoke about what will happen once we take the sponge out and squeeze it, talking bout how the sponge retains water like some other materials. The children really enjoyed this activity and then were able to play with it after, dropping lots of different materials of their choice in.

To extend on our ideas of floating and sinking, we experimented with making our own tinfoil bowls, and predicted whether they would hold up the items inside. We spoke about what items from our box we thought might weigh down the bowls, and used our mathematics knowledge on describing sizes, weights, quantities and questioned if the bigger or smaller bowls would work best, and whether our square bowl could work? We all predicted the smaller bowls would tip over and not be able to hold up with the weight, and the bigger bowls would be the best suited to float with items inside. Finally we put our predictions to test and we saw that most of us were wrong! The tinfoil bowls all worked really well, even the square one worked too. At the end one child asked “What will happen if we add all of the items to our big bowl?” so we tested it out and saw that the tinfoil bowl was able to hold up all of the items!

Great engagement preschool and lovely testing of your predictions!