More Science with Water

After doing a hand full of absorption experiments (what will absorb the most water, a cotton ball or a typing paper? aluminum foil or a tissue?), we got into the habit of creating hypotheses.

(Which is really like betting against each other scientifically!)

 Reaching the conclusion was fun, but talking about WHY the it happened was not as interesting.

I seem to remember liking the why better than the experiments when I was in school.

"Just tell me the answer already and I'll figure out why!"

Ugh- science labs, thanks for the bad memories Mr. O.

Oh, and I quickly removed my computer from the situation!

 For our 2nd experiment, we covered 4 cups with different materials to see what would absorb more 

and weaken after adding water.

 We used a cloth, coffee filter, baby wipe, and a napkin.

The kids had to write their hypotheses and later the conclusions in their journals.

 It was down to the baby wipe and napkin because they showed signs of sagging.  

Each kid took turns adding coins and water to the load.

 It took a LOT of coins and water for the tissue to finally break!

Way to go Puffs!  I had no idea they were so strong.

 Then we moved on to a color test.

 On strips of coffee filters we colored little dots with markers and dipped them into a bowl of water.

 This works best if the color dot is higher than the water line.

The kids got to see the colors separating and moving up the filter.

Here you can see yellow and blue from the green dot, and some red and blue in the purple.

This was more my style.

All in all, I'm glad my kids love science days.