Science Experiments...that WORK!

We've been using Five in a Row this week for a lot of our school. I decided to start with A Story About Ping (mainly because it's the first one in the manuel!), so we've been learning a lot about China this week. On Monday we looked up a lot of sites about the Yangtze river and Chinese junk boats and yesterday, Bear made a Chinese Flag and we watched a video about Chinese culture. Today we had a little science lesson about bouyancy because there is a part in the book where Ping meets a little boy who has a barrel tied onto his back so he won't sink. (Subsequently, Ping almost gets turned into dinner for the boy and his family, but The Boy has piy on him and lets him go...oops, did I give away too much of the suspense for you?)

I had Bear go and find things that she thought would sink and things she thought would float and we tested them in a big bucket of water. Surprisingly, two of the things that she thought would float did not, so we had some good discussion about why they might have sunk instead. Then we tied a string connecting the object to a small plastic bottle to see if it could be held afloat like The Boy in the story. Bear had a lot of fun with this activity! She just LOVES anything that is hands on!



P.S. The picture in the middle of the page is Ping on his junk boat with the "wise eyes". And where is Deco through all of this? He was playing at the neighbors house! God bless the neighbors!!