Thursday, March 14, 2013

Float or Sink? Sonlight P4/5 Week 3...

This week the instructor's manual suggested doing a floating and sinking activity which I knew my boys would be all about. One of my main goals is to start doing a LOT more science because they are eating it up.
I found a floating and sinking worksheet so tried to find items to test that matched the pictures on the worksheet. We headed to the bathtub to test them, but first they had to come up with a prediction of whether they'd float or sink.
 Their faces were priceless because they would get so excited if something did the opposite of what they expected. I kept trying to snap a picture, but this was as close as I got.  This is Will's "wow" face:
 

We used our big foam letters and sounded out what letter "float" and "sink" start with then labeled our bins. The items on the side were great learning experiences because they learned they float on top of the water but sink if filled with water. That was a fun add-on to the lesson.
Then they had to cut apart the pictures on their worksheet and glue them under "float" or "sink". And, yes, we like to work with no shirts on- especially if they happen to get wet when you play in the tub full of water you were supposed to be using for your experiemnt :) 

We had an interesting discussion on where would be the best place to glue the pictures of the items that did both- float and sink (depending on if they had water in them).  I loved how they were really thinking!
I've been thining floating and sinking would be good to do, but I probably wouldn't have gotten around to doing floating and sinking if it hadn't been mentioned in my Sonlight teacher manual. I am such a planner though that I have to say I am adding a lot of stuff into our Sonlight studies that I don't really have to but that's what I enjoy doing. That makes it Ok, right? Of course, it also means we are getting "behind" in our Sonlight reading though- again, that's OK too. I have to keep reminding myself to just breathe and enjoy!