What kid doesn't like pretty colors and making a mess? I know my sons love both of these things. This is a fun throw back post to when my youngest son made his first Density Column about 3 years ago.
Density is a difficult concept for small kids to understand, but they do understand that some things sink and some things float. Like most kids my boys thought that all liquids would just mix together if you poured them into a jar. But the looks on their faces when you could float one liquid on another one was just priceless.
This is a great experiment to do at home in your kitchen and just demonstrate how it is done, but with a little prep work, you can make a wonderful science lesson out of it.
I started by giving my kids small jars with the different liquids inside. I asked them to shake them, turn them over and examine them. Then they guessed what each mystery liquid was. They described them to me and talked about their guesses.
Next I asked them to predict what would happen if we poured the green liquid in with the brown liquid. I gave the record sheets to draw what they thought it would look like. We did the same thing with the red and yellow liquids. After we talked about their predictions, we started to mix them together. This part can be a little tricky. You need to pour the liquids together slowly to allow the less dense ones to float on top of the more dense liquids. I love to see their eyes when the colors don't mix together and look "like mud" (my youngest son's prediction).
We took the time to guess why the liquids didn't mix together. They went back to investigate the original jars and make new predictions before we moved on.
Finally I poured all the liquids into one jar. If you do this slowly and carefully, you will end up with a lovely rainbow like we did. Of course, boys being boys, my sons wanted to throw things in the jar to see if they would sink or float. This led to a wonderful session of predictions about where the items would land in the jar. Which things were more dense than oil but less dense than dish soap? Where would a Lego stop and float? What a messy but fun science extension.
Looking at the jar of colors made me think about the book "A Bad Case of Stripes". You all know how I love my books. So of course I made this into a science and literature connection. You can purchase this lesson with all the instructions, science lab sheets and a reading response to the story here. It is perfect for your first day of school.
I hope all your days are filled with wonder,
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