Need a science experiment/demonstration for a 1st grade classroom
Next week it's my turn to go to my daughter's classroom and interact with the kiddies. The teacher likes for the parents to do a fun science experiment with them, and I'm trying to think of something that:
1) They would enjoy
2) Is relatively simple to do
3) They could participate in on some level
Anyone have any ideas?
Last edited by Sarahfeena; 06 Jan 2011 at 11:22 AM.
Well, there's the classic Mentos in the Diet Coke -- I'm not exactly sure what the science is behind it, but you could probably wing it.
Ha ha, I thought of that, but I'm afraid it will make a mess, and it's too cold to go outside. They would love it, though, that's for sure.
How about making your own butter by shaking a container of cream? That's less messy and pretty cool, although it requires more patience.
Does that really work? I've never tried it, but I think they would get a kick out of it if we could make it happen.
(I mean, yes, I know that you get butter by churning cream, but I mean could a bunch of 1st graders shake it hard enough for say a 1/2 hour or so to actually get some butter?)
Teach them about surface tension! I don't know if they'd understand the molecular explanation, but it's pretty cool to watch.
Another fun and simple water experiment is to learn how things float in the first place. You make a boat out of tinfoil and then start adding things to it until it sinks. Directions here.
The boat one is good because you can have teams of kids making boats and then testing them.
So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.
Also: I made butter for the first time around that age, so it is possible! Especially if you have a lot of little arms to take over when they get tired.
So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.
It depends on how ambitious your first graders are, I guess.
I've done it for my kid, but I was doing the shaking. I forget how long it took, but it's kind of impressive -- one minute you've still got cream, the next butter.
You might want to do a home experiment with Sassy and Boots to see if it can be pulled of in less time than it takes to get bored
I was going to say this!Originally posted by Rube E. Tewesday
"I won't kill for money, and I won't marry for it. Other than that, I'm open to just about anything."
-Jim Rockford
Flour Bomb
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
I think flour bombs may not be allowed in the schools these days.
How about making artificial snot - similar to the butter churning, but a bit easier and the gross factor may appeal more than the utility of making butter.
You can teach them about non newtonian fluids by making what I call Ooblick but it has lots of names like wondergoo and mysterious liquid. It's 2 parts cornstarch to one part water and its viscosity varies depending on the amount of pressure it is experiencing. The less pressure there is the runnier it becomes. If you make 5 gallons of it, you can jump into it and stand on the surface of the goo as if it were solid floor and then sink into it. My favorite, though, is to put it on a cookie sheet and hit it with a hammer. It fractures into lots of little pieces that immediately flow back together. (It was featured on an episode of BBT as you can place it in a pie tin on a speaker and blast something with a rockin' bass and it dances like a weird little goo-man.
You can teach about acids and bases with red cabbage. Boil the cabbage for about ten minutes and collect the water. Red is acidic, yellow is basic and blue is slightly alkaline of neutral. And of course the graduations show how far along the scale you are.
I don't think so, therefore I'm probably not.
Oobleck is a great idea - I thought that stuff was awesome at that age, and it's not too messy.
Good ideas you guys! My husband just reminded me that they made butter in kindergarten. Apparently, butter did result after 75 or so 5-year-olds each shook it for a couple minutes!
The oobleck intrigues me. I'm going to experiment with it this afternoon. Thank you!
Last edited by Sarahfeena; 06 Jan 2011 at 03:03 PM.
Sulfur and water!
One of my favorite natural science demonstrations was about camouflage.
This worked out well for me because we had a die cutter at school so I could stamp out a bunch of butterfly shapes in red paper, white paper, and newspaper. You spread them out on a bunch of newspaper and give the kids a short amount of time (15-30 seconds) to grab as many butterflies as they can, then count them up. If the class is learning about graphs you can make a graph to represent how many red, white, and newspaper butterflies the class found.
Generally you end up with mostly red, some white, and a few newspaper. This is because the bright red ones stand out the most and are easy to find. The white butterflies look a little like the newspaper, so they're harder to find. The newspaper butterflies look exactly like the newspaper, so they have the best camouflage. You can bring in pictures to show how other animals use camouflage in the wild, too, and challenge the class to find the animal in the picture.
Last edited by RabbitMage; 06 Jan 2011 at 03:57 PM.
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