Tag Archives: water
A Tiny Planets Adventure: Snow Problem
Snow can be a lot of fun. You get to go sledding and skating. You can build snowmen. And best of all, you can have snowball fights! It’s hard to believe that water can be that much fun.
Yes, snow is just one of water’s many disguises. When it’s a liquid you can drink it. When it’s a solid you can skate on it. And if you get it really hot you can see it float up into the air in the form of steam, which is a gas.
One day Bing and Bong were visiting the Tiny Planet of Nature. They had the opportunity to help a group of snow flockers to learn about water’s different forms. The Flockers took a shower they were using liquid water.
But then their water heater stopped working. So the liquid water turned into solid snow and ice. Brrr! You can watch how Bing and Bong saved the day in their video called “Snow Problem.”
Bing and Bong were happy to have helped their flocker friends and learned something new. How about you? Do you like to learn new things? I hope so because this month we’re going to investigate some of the the different ways we see water on planet Earth.
Let’s Make Musical Water
Music can be found everywhere, even Water. Explore music with your child using a few simple household items. Let’s see if you can line up a chorus line as well as Bing did in A Chorus Line!
Materials
- Water
- 10 glass jars or bottles
- Sticky labels
- Spoon, fork or stick/pencil
- Food coloring (optional)
Instructions
- Fill each jar with different amounts of water. Start with very little water in the first jar and continue to fill each jar with an increasing amount.
- Have your child strike the jars carefully with a spoon (or whatever object you chose). Make sure to listen for the variety of pitches!
- Help your child put the sounds in order from low to high.
- Once they are in order, label the jars from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest).
- Mix up the jars — see what beautiful musical tunes the two of you can make together!
Extend the activity by asking your child to add or subtract water from the jars to see what happens. Does this change the pattern? Add food coloring. Does that change the pitches? Play around and explore together!
How It Works
The more water you have in a jar, the lower the pitch will be. You see, the sound vibrations you hear come from the jar, not water. So, as you add water it takes up more space — providing greater vibrating mass. The less water in the jar means there’s less weight to vibrate so the pitch is higher.
Health & Safety
- Encourage your child to strike the jars gently and supervise them at all times. Explain the dangers of glass jars and breakages.
Happy exploring!
Eeew! Sweaty Eggplants
Here’s an excellent experiment to teach the children how water flows in and out of tiny plant cells and have a delicious side dish of olive oil roasted eggplant with lemon.
Since an eggplant is a plant, water can flow in or out of its tiny cells. When you sprinkle salt onto the eggplant slice, there is more salt in the surroundings than inside the plant, so water leave the cells. This makes the eggplant appear to “sweat.” This process is used in cooking to take the bitterness out of the eggplant. Continue reading
The Cohesion/Adhesion Experiment
When I was little kid sometimes I’d watch the raindrops race down the glass window. I’d pick my favorite raindrop and cheer for my favorite droplet. Okay, a little weird, but it sure was fun watching the water flow down those window panes.
What I didn’t understand as I watched those raindrops move was that I was learning about “cohesion” and “adhesion.” Continue reading