Tag Archives: water

How does your garden grow?

May 16, 2016 Ailie Rankin 2 Comments

As spring has well and truly sprung, our visits to the allotment have resumed.

This presents an abundance of science opportunities for the children to experience.

20160509_102759[1] — Skippy helps us learn about plants and animals in the allotment.

Guiding us in our gardening is our friend Skippy (yes he is Australian). He looks after our allotment and helps us tend to the various plants and animals we find there.

"Skippy pointing to flowers and busy bees". — “Skippy pointing to flowers and busy bees”. By Owen

We were blessed with glorious sunshine on our visit on Monday, however our session started inside thinking about what seeds need to grow and how they change.

“They need soil” – Nathan

“They need the sun” – Patrick

“Water!” – Harmony

Skippy showed us the beans and peas that were planted by the last group.

the bean had started to grow a little! We could see the bean shell still on the top!

We could see a real difference between a bean without soil, water, heat and light and one that had.

They had grown into little plants.

Skippy told us about how the plants were buried in the soil to grow.

We had a think about what the plants needed to grow and how this could happen inside the hut (which has no windows).

“You could use the lights!” – Patrick

Skippy showed us the propagator and let Nathan and Lara feel the heat mat that keeps the seedlings warm and gives them light because the sun can’t do either inside.

The seedlings were kept warm on the heat mat and given light from the lamps.

Nathan applied his previous learning to what Skippy had shown and told us…

“Maybe the beanstalk will grow and have a castle at the top!” – Nathan

Skippy assured us that he hadn’t used magic beans so a castle was very unlikely. Then we went outside to see what was in the allotment, and what was growing.

Skippy showed us the leeks, chives, garlic and spring onions, and shallots that are all part of the onion family!

Skippy showed us where he had just cut up old flowers and scattered the cuttings. Seedlings were starting to grow.

Skippy showed us some of the vegetables he had started to grow in the greenhouse.

Skippy has started to grow tomatoes in the greenhouse too.

We saw an interesting green box at the end of a path…

We looked at the box and guessed what it might hold.

It was the allotment’s beehive!

Skippy told us how bees are essential for plants to grow.

“Without bees, nothing could live!” – Patrick

The bees get the stuff that they use to make honey, out of flowers.

We looked at some flowers to find the middle bit that the bees visit to collect nectar and get stuck with pollen. When the pollen from different flowers gets mixed up it allows new seeds to be formed – this is called pollination.

"The bees collect pollen from the flowers. — “The bees collect pollen from the flowers.

We looked for the middle bit of the flower to see where the pollen is for the bees to spread.

Skippy explained about why bees are important.

We pretended to be busy bees visiting the flowers getting covered in and spreading the pollen.

We tickled flowers pretending to be bees collecting nectar and spreading pollen

Busy bee Harmony gathering nectar to make honey and spreading pollen to make new plants!

Some of the middle yellow bits were extra special…

We tried to think what would be different about these flowers.

Skippy asked us to look closely at the middle bit of the flower.

The yellow middle will grow into strawberries!

The strawberries aren’t the only fruits growing in the allotment.

We looked closely at the plant to see tiny buds that will grow into raspberries.

We had a lot of thinking about seeds and how they grow, finding pollen and seedlings that have started to grow. However we hadn’t thought about how weeds and wild plants spread. The gardeners didn’t plant the chives in the path or the dandelions. We had a think about what moved them.

“The wind did it!” – Harmony

Skippy showed us where the seeds were formed in some plants and we helped spread some.

Skippy showed us where seeds can be found.

Skippy opened up some flowers to reveal the seeds.

Skippy demonstrated how wind helps to garden by spreading seeds.

Ellie acts like the wind to spread dandelion seeds.

Nathan helps spread dandelion seeds while practicing his counting with a dandelion clock.

Blowing dandelion clocks are a fun way to help your child count, think about more or less and learn about time language! The Mary Queen of Scots dandelion head popping rhyme is a good fine motor exercise, helping your child strengthen their finger muscles in preparation to write! The latter is more popular with gardeners 😉

All to soon it was time to return to the nursery, smarter little biologists.

Our visits to the allotment will continue throughout the growing season. We endeavour to get as many children to experience this as possible so your child should get a turn at some point.

colour, physics, weather

Over the rainbow

March 18, 2016 Ailie Rankin Leave a comment

Well we finally got to try and make a rainbow!

We returned to our scientific method of predicting, experimenting and reporting in our logbooks.

The question I posed was what would happen to the light from a torch if we shone it through a glass of water? I didn’t want to mention colour as I didn’t want to lead the children in their predictions. As a result the predictions showed that the children drew on their previous knowledge and experiences. (Applying knowledge is a higher order thought process – showing deep learning!)

“I don’t know………maybe a gas?” – Gabriel

(click on each picture to see whose is whose).

“It’ll just besplode this size” (gestures about 20 cm)

“It’ll make dark in the water because torches make shaddows.”

Charlie’s was the most poetic prediction however:

It will "get a bit gleamy" — It will “get a bit gleamy”

Fisrt we checked what the torchlight looked like normally:

There was some debate as to the colour of the light – silver, white, bluey or grey!

Then we took turns to shine the light through the glass of water…..

These photos don’t really capture what we noticed. So take it

from Caoimhe:

or Zach:

"It looked like a rocket!" — “It looked like a rocket!”

and others (again click on the pictures to see who said what)

“The light changed into blue and yellow on the paper”

“It turned into a moon shape and it was brown-y blue colour”

Again Charlie described it well:

“It’s like 10 different shapes and colours!”

Or have a look for yourself – how would you describe it?

So why? Where did the colours come from?

“the water changed the light”! – Gabi

“It bends, it was pushing it away” – Innes

The water bends the beam of light which has a affect on each different colour that makes up white light, all bending at a different angle. In other words the water seperates the colours that make white light. This is called refraction. It is what happens to sunlight reflected on raindrops which creates a rainbow in the sky.

The experiment didn’t impress everyone. Every session ends with a question:

“What could we do better?”

Normally I just get shrugs and “don’t know”s but today I got a couple of good replies:

“I prefer the spray experiment” – Charlie

“Maybe changing the colours a different way” – Gabi

So now we have evaluating to add to our skills that we practice with our science!

Smart cookies!

colour, Main building

Colour bore?

March 16, 2016 Ailie Rankin 2 Comments

Am I becoming a colour bore? I feel we have been looking at colour for a long time now. However the children continue to be really engaged and invested in their learning.

As planned, I offered the same experience, well the same resources again today. Of course it isn’t the same experience as now the children have their previous learning to draw on and develop. And me being me I had to add a twist. I added a mystery mixture in test tubes and a squirty bottle.

There was some debate over what the mystery mixture was.

“Is it vinegar?” – Patrick

“It’s water!” – Gabriel

“It’s nothing colour” – Heidi

It had a strange effect – it chased the colour away intead of mixing it.

“I’m chasing all the colours away!” – Heidi

“You’re chasing them all the way to America!” – Charlie

And it had a weird effect on the paper – it turned it see through too!

“It’s invisible colour!” – Charlie

Sophie noticed that you could draw with it using a pipette.

And the oddest thing was what it did to the colours when you put them in the test tubes to mix……

Tommy's blue floated around in little balls within the mystery liquid before settling on the bottom. — Tommy’s blue floated around in little balls within the mystery liquid before settling on the bottom.

“Gravity is what makes the colours go down!” – Caoimhe

Can you guess the mystery liquid? It was very slimy…

“Maybe it’s jellyfish” – Patrick.

“No they might sting us!!” – Alex

No fear it wasn’t jellyfish but just baby oil.

Oil and water won’t mix so our colours wouldn’t mix with the oil.

Well now we have begun to think about colours separating I think the time has come to chase rainbows….

Thank you for sharing our learning!Please remember to leave a comment. Ant suggestions for areas of science to explore would be very welcome! And don’t forget totell us about any science learning going on at home!

colour

Colour lab

March 14, 2016 Ailie Rankin 2 Comments

I thought we could continue to explore colour as the children were so entranced with the colours mixing rather than dancing during the magic milk experiment.

I had intended on using the squirty bottles to make a mist for us to attempt to reflect light on and make rainbows but our inquisitive and curious scientists were so taken with the squirty bottles it seemed wrong not to let them freely explore colours using the sprays as they wished. So I added red, yellow and blue water to the bottles as well as the test tubes.

Daniel had to coordinate his movements and use his hand muscles to fill the test tube using the squirty bottle. He mixed yellow and blue and made green!

It was hard to make out the colours that were being mixed in the test tubes however,

“I made black!” – Natalie

So I fetched a big bit of paper for us to spray the colours on to.

“It’s not black it’s a bluey green!” – Natalie

“I made it orange by doing 2 colours at the same time!” – Gabi

“Look it’s changing red – it’s mixing orange!” – Belle

Natalie, Daniel and Tommy each sprayed a different colour at the paper to see what colours they could make.

But the paper got soggy and absorbed the spilled water in the tray making the colours tricky to make out. So we added a shelf from the drying rack and it worked a treat!

Persevering with the tricky wee vaporizers – having to use strong finger muscles.

We talked to one another about what the colours that we made.

The paper got really soggy and tore easily after we soaked it with the colours.

Sometimes we had to mix the colours a little with our fingers.

We had to be coordinated to shoot the colour where we wanted.

It lookedlike a big palette of colours that we had made!

We sprayed lots of red and yellow to make bright warm colours. The paper felt very wet and thin.

Finlay tried 2 colours at once! He had to use coordination and both sides of his brain to spray both at the same place!

Finn made orange by adding yellow to the red.

Isla helped Lauren fill the tube with yellow – great team work!!

Caoimhe had to be quick and coordinated to catch the water dripping off the paper.

We had to use our hand muscles and coordination to spray the colour out of the bottles and on to the paper or the tray. We made a range of colours and talked about what we had created. We remembered which colours we had added and attempted to remake purples, oranges and greens although often ended up with browns.

Patrick and An were sure they had created more than just colours…

” I made dynamic soda! It powers rockets!! – Patrick

“It’s a samurai colour!” “It’s sacorizing! (It’s like a decorated surprize!)” – An

We had to take turns for the bottles and work together, developing our social skills.

“Yes! You CAN help me!” – An to Lauren

We also had to solve problems when things didn’t work as we’d hoped like the wee vapourizers being stiff, the bottles stopping working or when we set ourselves the challenge of filling the test tubes using the bottles. We compared amounts to see who had the most and the least, using lots of comparative language.

“I’ve got many!” – Adam

Amy realised that she could fill the test tube using the big squirty bottle.

We used those pincer grip movements to work the pipettes to mix colours in the test tubes.

Jayden watched the others and worked hard to be abole to use the wee blue vapourizer.

Adam focused on filling test tubes with the squirty bottles. He liked getting them full to the brim before tipping them out and starting again.

Zara exercised those important pincer movements and finger muscles to fill the test tubes with the pipettes.

James had to concentrate so as not to spill any colour.

Working together to solve tricky problems.

Some of the colours didn’t mix straight away so we had to solve the problem of how to get them to mix.

Broghan added red to her yellow and it didn’t mix- it looked like a cocktail! She had to give it a shake to make orange.

Zara’s blue and yellow didn’t mix completely!

Finlay added red to his yellow and made orange but it didn’t mix properly!

So we shook them (with the top covered of course!)

“Shake shake shake tomato!” sang Evie

Evie enjoyed mixing colours by shaking. She created a little song and wiggle dance to help mixing!

The shaking (and singing!) did the trick and the colours mixed well.

"Look at my green!" — “Look at my green!”

I don’t think we have exhausted the exploration of colour mixing. I think on Wed we shall revisit the learning and experience again but this time with coffee filters to see what happens to the colours with them.

And who knows maybe we’ll get on to rainbows, but then maybe we’ll explore another area altogether.

"Oh I made brown - do you think this would make a penny shiny?" — “Oh I made brown – do you think this would make a penny shiny?”

After all Patrick did mention the cleaning properties of Coke! Hmmmmm……

chemistry

Learning from Einstein

February 19, 2016 Ailie Rankin Leave a comment

Einstein quote

I saw this as I was eating my breakfast this morning and thought how this totally sums up learning through play. And explains why today we revisited gas.

This morning we looked at gas with the more scientific frame of mind, attempting to create a gas by mixing a liquid and a powder. We caught and measured the gas in the balloons again.

As usual we made and recorded predictions, observations and our thinking about why it happened (training the mind to think!).

Only one person predicted their solution wouldn’t make a gas:

Natalie – “I predict no gas.”

Everyone else predicted lots of gas would be made.

Innes chose a tablet and vinegar and predicted "a big gas" — Innes chose a tablet and vinegar and predicted “a big gas”

Lucy chose to mix a tablet and bubble bath and predicted "a big bit of gas". — Lucy chose to mix a tablet and bubble bath and predicted “a big bit of gas”.

Pearce chose to mix a tablet and vinegar and predicted "lot's of gas". — Pearce chose to mix a tablet and vinegar and predicted “lot’s of gas”.

In fact Sophia and Olivia selected their ingredients based on their past experience with the science. When asked why they had selected bicarbonate of soda and vinegar,

Olivia replied: “Because it’s going to get bigger and explode!”

and Sophia said, “Because I want mine to get ginormous!”

So there were a variety of results depending on the combination chosen.

We had to wotk together to crush the tablets.

We squeezed the balloons to feel the gas.

Olivia pours her bicarbonate of soda from her balloon into the vinegar.

Gabriel was disappointed when his mixture of fizzy water and icing sugar made very little gas.

Patrick was able to set up his expeiment with very little help.

Ryan liked watching the bubbles fizz and make the gas.

Sophia’s mixture made a lot more gas than Isla’s

carbonated water and effervescent vitamin tablet.

“Oh my gosh Sophia! That is soooo big!” – Millie

The most interesting however was the bubble bath + effervescent tablet………

You could see the crushed tablet sink into the bubble bath.

The crushed tablet took a while to mix with the bubble bath so nothing happened for a while.

After a while it mixed and produced a little gas!

Gracie and Bramble were able to apply their previous science learning to their understanding of what had happened…

"We made a potion. It forced up lots and lots of gas and made the balloon bigger and bigger!" - Gracie — “We made a potion. It forced up lots and lots of gas and made the balloon bigger and bigger!” – Gracie

"The balloon goed bigger and bigger 'cause of the experiment gas!"- Bramble — “The balloon goed bigger and bigger ’cause of the experiment gas!”- Bramble

Smart cookies eh?!

For the afternoon session I took to heart another Einstein quote……

So we just freely “researched” compounds and mixtures.

We talked about what was happening and what we wished to add to our mixtures.

We had to use our hand and finger muscles to squeeze the ingredients out of the bottle – this helps us prepare to write!

And the phrases “Oh my gosh!” and “Look at mine!” were heard aplenty when the vinegar, bicarbonate of soda, effervescent tablets and carbonated water began to mix.

We used a huge amount of maths language as we were experimenting – “more” ,”less”, “after”, “next”,” first” ,”higher”, “heavier” ,”lighter” as well as hearning myself model more science vocabulary.

Did you know that the greater a child’s vocabulary before school, the more success they have in school? You can read research suggesting that here and here.

Also did you know that the average person produces gas 14 times a day? (Thought Patrick might like that wee fact!) Why not amuse your family with more fart facts?

I’m sure Einstein would have been very proud!

Don’t forget to share the learning that your child shares at home and leave comments to let me know what you think of the experiments and the blog – especially any ideas or suggestions – Thank you!

chemistry

balloons and gas

February 17, 2016 Ailie Rankin 4 Comments

Today we looked and at and thought about balloons and gas. This was a follow up to Isla’s fab question last time:

“What is gas?”

So we started with our balloon holding bicarbonate of soda on a bottle containing vinegar. We discussed what happened when we mixed these ingredients on Monday.

“The bottle fell over and it just fizzed a bit” – Alf

So the consensus of prediction was that the bottle would fall over.

The balloon inflated however, much to the children’s delight!

“Arrgh! It’s getting bigger! It’s going to explode!!” – Patrick

We squeezed and shook the balloon and bottle and thought about the bubbles (which were made by the gas) and we decided to investigate – could we make a gas?

“Yes!” – Daniel “It’ll be like a bomb and explode!” – Patrick

We had bicarbonate of soda, vinegar, effervescent tablets, carbonated water, bubble bath, conditioners, shaving foam, caster and icing sugars.

We discussed safety as usual:

“Wash hands after.” – Innes “Don’t pop the balloons!” – Alex

“Move if you think it’ll explode!” – Daniel

Again there was disagreement about how long it would take….

“25 hundred” – Daniel “Just a minute or 2” – Patrick

"It'll take THIS long" — “It’ll take THIS long”

We mixed various ingredients and had a variety of results:

“It grew bigger and bigger and exploded like a bomb! It was going EVERYWHERE!” “It was because of the gas” – Patrick

“Look at mine! It’s like lava but it’s not hot!”

In the afternoon I structured it so that we were much more scientifically looking at the gas first. The children could choose what to mix and predict if it would make a gas to inflate the balloon or not.

"It might melt our eyes!" — “It might melt our eyes!”

It fizzed and bubbled out from under the lid.

It was not good, not enough gas” – Finn

"I'm scared it'll blow up" — “I’m scared it’ll blow up”

“It was small”- Belle

“It looks like a rocket” – Isla C.

"It just made a little gas." — “It just made a little gas.”

Sophia gave us the quote of the day………

“I am OBSESSED with all this gas! It’s like a hundred billion! It’s amazing!” “How much gas are you making????”

Our star scientist award has to go to Fraser though. He was one of the first to join the experiment and nearly the last to leave at the end of the morning. He quickly realised which ingredients gave the best fizzy results and experimented with differing amounts in various containers. He really focused on developing his learning about chemical reaction and gas! Well done Fraser!

Why not have a go at some mad mixing at home to create gases and explosions? Any household and kitchen ingredients could combine to make an interesting and possibly smelly concoction! Our fizzy favourites have to be the vinegar+ bicarbonate of soda or the carbonated water + effervescent tablets + bubble bath. Let us know how you get on, share any cool pictures or results.

And remember you can find lots of science ideas on our pinterest page.

Happy experimenting!

Campus, chemistry

Christmas Science

January 30, 2016 Ailie Rankin Leave a comment

At christmas time the learning continued (you may have noticed the onset of the season in some of the previous posts’ pictures).

It was only right that the science that we explored be linked to not only the previous sessions but also the festivities – helping us all to apply the learning in a meaningful context.

Building on our observations of the changing state of the foam from the Elephant’s toothpaste, we looked at changing states again but of sugar, in the form of candy canes.

We considered what happens to candy when you leave it in your mouth for a wee while. Then considered the results of different solutions – hot water, cold water, carbonated water, vinegar or oil.

The previous experiences influenced our predictions.

Put it in vinegar - it'll make bubbles. — Put it in vinegar – it’ll make bubbles.

"I think it's going to make rain!" — “I think it’s going to make rain!”

"It's going to be bright like a sun!" — “It’s going to be bright like a sun!”

"They will go red"[the liquids] "Carbonated water first, vinegar last" — “They will go red”[the liquids] “Carbonated water first, vinegar last”

So Matthew guessed the differences in the liquids would affect the candy canes the same way but over different times, most children predicted the candy canes would react the same way in all the solutions. But Mathew was closest.

We think and talk about our predictions.

We popped one candy cane each into testubes of different solutions.

We ran out of candy canes for the afternoon so had to check the pieces we used were about the same size.

We wanted to have ownership of the different test tubes in the afternoon so we could almost make it a competition!

We took notes and recorded our findings.

The solutions in some of the test tubes began to change

We lifted the canes up and out every now and again to check on them.

We agitated the mixture by shaking it to see if it changed the process.

Some of the candy canes had gotten a lot thinner! They had disolved!

“It’s snapped! The hot water one broke!”

We laid the left over canes out side by side so that we could compare them more easily.

The canes had changed a lot, they were quite different.

We talked about what we thought had happened.

The hot water seemed to have had the most effect.

The candy cane that had been in the hot water had almost disolved completely. The oil one hadn’t changed at all.

“The oil one will never change” Ramsay

We were quite intrigued about the differences and the disolving and so we came up with ideas of other things we could try the candy canes in.

Emily chose milk and predicted. “It’ll turn the milk pink”

It did but the cane hardly disolved in the time it took hot water to work.

Eilidh chose bubble bath and predicted a pink cloud.

We used lots of descriptive and comparative language when we looked at more than one test tube.

Erin tried orange juice and predicted a change in colour.

“A cloud! A cloud! It’s making a wee pink cloud!”

Only Emily’s disolved in any noticable way, although they were all very very sticky which suggest the process started with them all in some way.

So now we know: sugar disolves in water but not oil, and the temperature of the water can speed up or slow down the process.

We also know science doesn’t need to stop at Christmas! You can always investigate H2Ho Ho Ho!

(Too far?)

For more easy science why not check out Pinterest.

Or Happy Hooligans has some fun ideas also.

Don’t forget to leave a comment or share your experiment and learning with us!

Happy experimenting

Campus, weather

How does it rain?

January 27, 2016 Ailie Rankin Leave a comment

Well after our success with making a cloud we just had to think about why some clouds rained and why others didn’t?

So we conducted an experiment to investigate this.

We hypothesised it was about the quantity of water the cloud had soaked up, and recorded these in our science logbook.

Daniel recorded that he predicted clouds needed more water to make rain.

Alex predicted that the cloud with less water would make rain.

So we set up our experiment….

We started with a tub of plain water to represent the air.

We squirted shaving foam on top to be the cloud.

The foam floated on top of the water, like a cloud hanging in the sky.

We used dropper s to pick up and drop blue food colouring onto the foam.

We used blue colouring to pretend it was water in the clouds. The dye meant we could see what happened to it. We added a tiny bit to one and a lot more to another.

We looked closely through the magnifying glasses.

We talked about what we thought was happening. One cloud had made rain!

We looked again. Daniel and Alex added more dye to see what would happen.

The clouds with lots of dye ‘water’ rained for a while.

We recorded our findings in our logbook.

Natalie recorded that the large cloud stayed the same when the little cloud let rain through

Rebekah recorded the rain falling from the cloud.

So clouds with lots of water are the ones that make rain. If a cloud only has a little water, it doesn’t. Lots of water is heavier than a little water so the water falls down when there is enough in the cloud to be heavy, but big clouds need more water to become too heavy and rain.

But we didn’t stop there. Chloe and Amelia wanted to see if they could speed things up by mixing the cloud (foam) and (water) air.

Investigating best stirring implement – glue spreader or paint brush?

“I’m going to make mine sparkly like Elsa”.

That got us thinking about potions and mixing – what could we add to what? Would different things happen? Hmmmm.

Campus, weather

The afternoon Campus children were interested too……

January 25, 2016 Ailie Rankin Leave a comment

But the weather had changed! It had rained, so that led us to think about where the rain comes from?

Chloe: “The clouds – it falls out the clouds.”

The rain made puddles, and came from the clouds but how did it get into the clouds?

So a cloud is made of water that has evaporated (turned into a gas)from a source of water like a puddle or river or sea.Then it has gotten cold again and condensed (turned back into tiny wee water droplets) sticking onto miniscule bits of dirty air.

You can make a cloud too!

All you need is: