Tags: big kids, boats, experiment, floating, natural materials, nature, science, sinking

Floating and Sinking Experiments

December 3, 2014

Written by: Jen

A Wet Experiment for a Wet Day

What floats?

Fall is in full force now. The rain is filling up puddles outside and the wind is blowing branches, leaves and chestnuts all over the ground. This week in our nature program Falling for Nature we took natural items found all over the ground and did an experiment. Stinky the frog (the mascot of our nature program) was there to lead us through the experiment with stories of swimming and floating in his pond home.

What will sink and what will float?

With eyes closed, the kids each received an item in their hand to touch and smell. What is that object in your hand? Is it heavy or light? Soft or hard? Big or small? Rough or smooth? After figuring out what all our items were: a feather, a stick, a cedar bough, a rock, a chestnut, a seashell, a leaf, and more, we asked….. Will it sink under the water? Or will it float on top?

We made a chart with our guesses and then set off to do our experiment. We charted our results. The kids love playing with water and this gave them a purpose for their play….each child got to try out many different items to see what happened when they put them into the water.

Kelp, bark, twigs and leaves

The float/sink chart

Lots of things float

Of course with water out, what did the kids want to do next…..BUILD BOATS!

With the children taking the lead, some materials were set out and the kids designed and crafted a boat of their own! The kids got very creative and made all different types of boats – some that floated, some that did not. But the process of finding out what would happen was really the fun part!