Simple Science – Magnets – Magic Moving Trains

Luath and I were playing with her trains and I thought I would show her repelling and attracting with magnets.  Luath called it magic.
First we slowly moved the wagon towards the engine and they hooked up together.

Next we turned the wagon around, moved it slowly towards the engine and instead of hooking together the engine started to move away from the wagon.
 
It works on carpet but worked better on track as sometimes the engine tries to hook onto the wagons wheels.  We managed to add another wagon so that one wagon, moved the other which then moved the engine, but this was pretty tricky.
Luath had most fun doing this on a train track bridge so the engine went siding off.
(Luath is 30 months)
Shared with Tuesday Tots

Simple Science – Carrot/Apple. Sink or Float

This was an very easy experiment that can be expanded depending on the age of the child.  All you need is a carrot, an apple and a large bowl of water.
     
I asked Luath if she thought the carrot would sink or float.  She then placed it in the water.  We did the same for the apple. 
 
As we were in the kitchen I brought down the scales and we weighed the apple and carrot. 
 
Luath then repeated the experiment multiple times she thought it was great fun.  She kept putting the carrot and apple in saying “the carrot floats and the apple sinks” – she does know float and sink, so not sure if she was getting mixed up or she was doing her opposite talk.  She thinks it is funny to say things the wrong way round, when we are at traffic lights she often says “red means go, green means stop”  but we know she definitely knows that isn’t correct.

You could cut through and show the different density but we  finished the experiment with the dog eating the carrot and Luath the apple.
(Luath is 29 months)
Shared with tuesday tots and it’s playtime

Simple Science – sink or float in a puddle

Luath was very happy to see the return of some big puddles in the woods.  Once she had done quite a few return trips through them all we played a game of sink or float.

We took turns picking up an object and asking sink or float before throwing it into the puddle to discover what it would do.

Luath did say sink for most things – perhaps wishful thinking.  At one point she stamped on some moss to make it sink.

Stones were the only ones to sink.

Everything else floated.
   
(Luath is 27 months)

Simple Science – Colour Changing Flowers

I have seen this quite a few times online and it was on our to do one day list.  When I spied white tulips in the reduced section I thought perfect.  The idea is to show flowers uptake of water.

I lined up four glasses and half filled with water.  We added either yellow, red and blue food colouring to three of the glasses and left the fourth with no colouring. I gave the colouring a good mix and then topped up with water.  We cut about 2 inches off the bottom of each tulip and then placed a tulip in each of the glasses.  I attempted to cut the remaining tulip stems in half so the flower could be split between two colours, however tulips are not easy to cut so this part of the experiment didn’t work too well. 

The blue food colouring is powerful paste and it worked very quickly, within an hour the tulip was already slightly blue.

By the next day it was bluer still.  When Luath told daddy to come look at the flowers he said “oh I didn’t know you could buy blue tulips”.

The red and yellow took a little longer to show.  The blue flower is stunning but the leaves on that tulip have also turned blue which looks a bit yuk, however it does really show where the water travels too.
 
This is an easy experiment with pretty instant results if you use strong food colouring.  Next time we do this we will repeat with stems we can cut in half.

Luath likes that the flowers changed colours and she could also see that they were drinking the water as the water level had gone down from being at the glass rim.
(Luath is 25 months)
 
Shared with Tuesday tots via Rainy Day mum

Simple Science – So what would happen to the Gingerbread man if he had got wet?

Luath loves the story of the Gingerbread man.  About a month ago I made her story stones of the tale. 

She quite often takes these stones out and retells herself the story.  She doesn’t tell it from start to finish, just parts here and there.  Often she makes new additions, yesterday I heard her have the little old man and woman stones talking to each other and then giving each other a kiss. 

Her favourite part is when the fox takes the Gingerbread man across the river.  I thought it would be fun to let Luath see what would happen if the Gingerbread man had tried to cross the river without the aid of the fox.  We made some gingerbread biscuits, they tasted yummy but where a bit rugged as we had had a few interruptions during the process.

The Experiment
Luath loves it when I say we are going to do an experiment.  I asked her what she thought would happen when the Gingerbread man went into the water (hard question for her but I was curious what she would say).  She replied “I don’t know”  I gave her some time to answers as often that is her quick first response.  She didn’t offer anything further so we got started.

We filled a tub with water then added the gingerbread man.  First he floated, then slowly sank.

He went slightly fuzzy looking.  At this point I suggested Luath should feel him.  I gave her another gingerbread man to feel the difference.

Luath ate her (control!) biscuit and we watched the test subject.  Luath decided to start pushing and breaking up the man in the water and he became mushy quite quickly.

We talked about why the Gingerbread man in the story had decided to accepted the offer of help from the fox.Later when we told daddy about our experiment, he suggested we should have also had the dog play the part of the fox – she would have definitely eaten the man up.

Science questions answers the question why does a biscuit go soggy quicker in milky tea?  and explains what happens when a biscuit is dunked.
(Luath is 25 months)
Shared with Read.Explore.Learn at JDaniel4’s Mom

Simple science – Frozen Hearts in the bath

Inspired by some icy puddles we were cracking while out for a walk I thought I would make some ice cubes for Luath to play with.  Since it is coming up for Valentine’s I made some heart shaped ice cubes using a muffin tin and added some hot pink and red food colouring to the water.  They turned out pretty.
    

I decided that the bath would be a fun place to play with them since we had already investigated the ice from the puddles and from our bird bath.  I placed the hearts on an upturned container that partially floated.


Luath was initially interested but quickly became bored with them.  I placed one heart in a bowl and gave it a shake, this released some pink watery dye into the container which sparked Luath’s interest.  She took the heart out of the bowl and soon discovered that it started to shrink/melt in the bath water.  The ice cubes being cupcake size gave them a little longer to melt than if they had been regular ice cube sized.


We worked our way through all the hearts.  Towards the end Luath decided that they were great to taste, I am sure it was the texture than the actually taste though.
(Luath is 24 months)

Simple Science - Bubbles

Luath loves bubbles and was very excited that Santa left her 3 bottles of bubbles in her Christmas stocking - amazing what Santa can find at the first last minute when he discovers that Luath won’t be home for Christmas as planned. We have been doing lots of bubble blowing and Luath has mastered how to fill the wand and blow her own bubbles.

One evening Luath wasn’t keen to stop bubble blowing with daddy and have her bath (she loves her baths usually), so I said “let’s take the bubbles to the bath”.  What fun we had and we learned some interesting science facts.

Bubbles go up instead of down over the warm bath air.

Bubbles stick to wet hands.

(Luath is 23 months)