Ants and a Giveaway!

Today at Messy Fingers we checked out ants and made some predictions about what we thought ants would   be attracted to.   

We put two things (more or less!) on the plate that we thought ants would be attracted to and marked that with a blue "y" and things that wouldn't be yummy to ants we marked with a red "n." You can see two little black specs about 7 o'clock on the plate above. C picked apple pie filling, banana, and candy as things that an ant would like to eat. She was completely correct about the pie filling. 

This was soda and a few ants came to investigate the puddle it made on the ground beneath the plate.

Now some folks say that cucumber peels and limes are ways to repel ants. Unfortunately, we really didn't have ants visiting many of the plates despite being in close proximity to many ant hills. I saw at least three different species of ant walking between the plates but most of the plates went unvisited by ants even after three hours of exposure. 

You can see some of the things the kids thought might or might not attract ants. They were very interesting and thoughtful predictions.

This scientist below brought chips from a picnic and the blob about five o'clock is chocolate syrup. Silly ants, why aren't they all visiting!

While this experiment wasn't as successful as we'd hoped, we've done plenty of other experiments that have produced more revealing results. 

Now for some new fun.  I am offering a basket of planting tools and seeds along with some books to a randomly drawn name from the comments to THIS post. One entry for commenting on a favorite Messy Fingers topic or experiment. You can get a second entry to the Giveaway by following this blog - just mention that in a second comment.

Winner will be chosen Tuesday June 4 at 10:30 am.

Good luck!!

Bubble Solution Recipe

Bubbles are one of my favorite tools in the preschool science tool box. They are commonly available and yet have an extraordinary quality about them. They are a tiny piece of joy that engage everyone of all ages for those few precious seconds they last.

Today we played with bubbles as scientists. Usually it is cold or rainy when I schedule bubbles and today didn't disappoint, it was quite chilly. One of the things we did was compare store bought to homemade bubble solution.

If you'd like to do this at your home, here is the Official, Super-fabulous, Messy Fingers Bubble Recipe:

1 gallon of water
1 bottle of ultra Dawn - blue seems to be the best
2-3 oz glycerin (CVS in the skin care section, other drug stores put it in first aid or in the pharmacy)
Time.
Gently mix the first three ingredients without making foam and wait at least overnight before use.

A gallon of bubble solution sounds like a lot, but a few really nice days or some extra friends over on a lazy summer afternoon, and it can be use up quickly.

Halloween III

I

I love sour flavors. My daughter is right there with me so it was difficult for her to part with sour candy. But part with it she did. We gathered all the sour candy including funny sour french fries. We added a quarter cup of water to each candy and let them sit long enough to dissolve. Only Nerds really dissolved, everything else just started to melt. We predicted the sour patch kids would be the most acidic candy since it tasted the most sour.

Then we added 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. The more acidic the candy, the greater the fizzing will be. The  smarties gave a nice fizz. It didn't last very long though.

Nerds fizzed a lot and for a very long time.

The french fries fizzed a lot at first but not for long.

The sour grape was a dud. It barely fizzed at all.

The sour patch kids fizzed well and for a long time.

The super sour jaw breaker fizzed a lot but didn't hold it's fizz. Once the outside coating was dissolved, it pretty much stopped fizzing.

In the end, our prediction was not correct. Nerds fizzed the longest and the most. We all talked about why this might be and decided that it was because they were also the smallest candy and was the only one to really dissolve in the water. Next time, we could crush them all or cut them up so they dissolved in the water.

Guess what we are doing next year!!

5 June Science Ideas

Need some quick ideas for fun summer science with the kids? I usually have a few quick ideas for days that are just too hot to be outside or if summer plans fall through.  Here are some good ones for June:

1. Ice - Make some fun ice cubes in whatever containers you can find around the house. Pull them out and put the kids outside with a couple of challenges like build the tallest tower or have ice cube races by pushing them along the deck or driveway. What shape moves the best?

2. Kites - This is such a fun thing to do with kids, making a kite. Here is an excellent kite to make with minimal supplies. I have done with with kids as young as four and as old as teens. It was a hit with everyone. There are no formal experiments, but you will try flying and then altering your kite as you go. Think of this more as an engineering project.

3. Floaters and sinkers - This is a fun activity on a hot day. With very young children, use a small tub, but with bigger kids, consider using a small pool. Gather some objects and make predictions about what will sink or float. Then test your predictions. Were you right?

Here is a longer explanation.

4. Reversible Change - How long does it take for a freeze pop to turn to liquid?  What if it is in the shade? Can you have a race to see who can keep their ice pop frozen the longest. Once they are all defrosted, how long does it take to refreeze?  Check every 15 minutes. You will be surprised on both ends.

5. Mentos geysers - This is a super fun activity and will have everyone amazed from age two to 92. The idea is that if you put Mentos candies into a 2-lr bottle of diet soda, you will get a geyser. I would recommend trying different kinds of diet soda. When we did this we found that different kinds made a difference in the height of the geyser. Get the tube here tho I was able to get mine at Target at Christmas time.

Floaters and Sinkers

We had a great, wet time today playing with floaters and sinkers. First we gathered stuff that we thought would either float or sink. These were our predictions which is a fancy science word for guess.

We recorded our predictions in a small notebook. I was really impressed with the variety of ways that the kids recorded their predictions from tracing the objects to drawing with different colored crayons.
Then we tested our predictions. This part was great fun. We used another science tool, tweezers, to reclaim our objects from the water.

We double checked our predictions and found that for most part, our predictions were correct. We did have some surprises. The rubber bands did not float. A few folks thought that the Legos would sink and were surprised that they float nicely.

Our final challenge was to make a boat that could float as many pennies as possible. One participant, Lucas, was able to float 23 pennies on a piece of tin foil!

If you want to check out some other things to float and sink, go see my previous post here.

Simple Machines

There are six classic simple machines:

1. Lever
2. Inclined Plane
3. Screw
4. Pulley
5. Wheel and Axel
6. Wedge

Now when most of us think about machines we think more about a car than a ramp, but at the heart of both machines is laziness! Machines are things that make work easier - it is easier to carry a load up an inclined plane than it is to lift it straight up.

It was with some trepidation that I chose this topic for our most recent workshop at the library. Generally teaching about simple machines involves history, math and moving large loads - none appropriate for preschoolers!

I settled on two simple machines that the kids would be a bit familiar with: inclined plane and wheel/axle. The inclined planes we used were fabric bolts (thanks to Denise who owns Close to Home Sewing Store in Worcester!) and we used them to roll balls down to play with some ideas. We found many ways to help the balls roll farther. While this is not the actual way that an inclined plane helps make work easier, it was a great way to compare and contrast different inclines.

We used non-standard measures to figure out how far the ball rolled. Below one of my participants is using her shoe to measure distance. This was a lot of fun! One kid used herself as her measure!

Wheels and axles were fun to play with. We first tried rolling plastic eggs and found them wiggly. Then we tried toy cars and that worked really well - they rolled straight down and went really far.

If you liked these ideas, here are some ways to jump in and try some physics with your preschoolers.

Playgrounds are a great place to explore physics. A seesaw is an example of a classic lever. If you can find one that moves freely, can you balance a parent on one side and kids on the other? What happens if you move closer to the center?

Slides offer a great opportunity to play with inclined planes. You can move things up the slide with a jump rope. You can also measure the slides' height and length to compare slides. Can you determine what height and length are the most fun?

Books
Michael Dahl has written a number of books on each one of the simple machines. Check them out!

The pictures today are courtesy of Kristen Graffeo. Check out her blog!

Fish!

One of our intrepid young scientists tried some of the suggestions made after our Floating and Sinking program. She learned about "fish" and jello. Jello is loads of fun for many reasons and can be a delicious science material.

D and her mom grabbed some jello and candy fish to see if the fish float and how long the jello takes to solidify.

I am very proud of D and her family for making predictions before starting their project and that they learned new things as they went.

Check out the fish bowl experiment here.

Nice job!!

Float my boat...

What things float and what things sink is such a natural question for kids - even at very young ages. This presents a wonderful opportunity to practice being a scientist at bath time. Take a second and ask you kids to make a prediction about what floats and what sinks. Test your predictions and follow up with seeing if you were right.

During our Messy Fingers session yesterday, we made predictions about floaters and sinkers. We had a few surprises. A few objects floated at first on the surface of the water and then sank. They were held up by the surface tension of the water. Crayons were another surprise. I expected that since they are made of wax that they would float, but regular crayons sank. Fat crayons, even more surprisingly, neither sank or floated but hovered in the middle. One end floated more than the other. Cool.

We made boats out of tin foil and modeling clay. Our foil boats were modified by reshaping and adding floaties so they were strong enough to hold a ball of clay. This was quite a production. Both rectangular and canoe-shaped boats worked really well for this.

One mom wondered why I chose to use modeling clay rather than play dough to use in the water. I gave her some play dough to test out and it falls apart in the water (so it is washable!).

If you want to play with some other floating and sinking ideas, check out the ideas below:

Make a soap boat – cut a small boat from cardboard or foam. Leave a notch in the end. Float this in a pan of water. Does the boat float? Can you make it move? Put a tiny sliver of soap or a dot of liquid soap in the notch. What happens? Does this work in the tub? [This won’t work in the tub if you’ve used any soap. The boat floats on the surface tension of the water. Soap breaks up the tension.]

Flinkers – can you find an object that neither floats or sinks?

Fish – check out some fish. Either in your own aquarium or visit a local pet shop. How do they move? What shapes are they? Does their shape affect how they move? Can you move like the fish?

Jello - Make your own aquarium – make up some blue jello and as it solidifies, add some gummy sharks or fish. Make a prediction about how long it will take to solidify. Why don’t they float up to the top? Watch the jello as it solidifies. How long does it take?

For some other great boat activities, click here.

Bubble Challenge

I am going to set out a challenge for you all. I want you to grab some bubbles - yes the kind we usually reserve for sultry summer days and noisy playgrounds. Try blowing some bubbles today. How do you think bubbles will behave in cooler weather?

Blow and then catch them on your wand. What happened?

Now, it looks like Friday around central Massachusetts is going to be a cold day with a predicted high of about 21' F. So, Friday morning do the same thing - blow a few bubbles, catch one on your wand, and watch. What do you *think* might happen? What is different?

What did happened?

Post here and tell us about your experience.