Magnets and Solutions

Along with math and language arts (yep, those are every day), it was science today. Science is much more fun to take pictures of, so that is what I did. Spike is studying magnets, and what kid does not get a kick out of playing with magnets? He did a couple of experiments today. For the first he took a needle and pulled it across one end of his bar magnet 20 times. We then put a section of cork on either end, he colored one end so that we could tell them apart, and then floated the contraption in a bowl of water. And what did we have? A compass! Spike thought it was awesome.
His second experiment was more of a game. I gathered random stuff from around the house, like a bobbin, paper clip, pop can top, CD, et cetera, and put it into a box. He had his horseshoe magnet tied onto a stick and "fished" for things to figure out what was magnetic. I had made him guess beforehand. The big surprise for him was that the top of the pop can was not magnetic. Sprout liked watching him to the experiment, and later tried her own hand at it.

Princess had her very last solutions experiment. For this one, she made 2 liters of Kool-Aid. She put 100 mL of the drink into 6 different cups, and added an increasing amount of water to each cup. If I remember correctly the amounts of water started at none, and by the last one it was 150 mL. She then studied how they look different as the solution became more diluted along with the difference in taste. Spike and Sprout glady helped with the tasting. This lesson, of course, went along with reading about concentration and dilution of solutions. Wow, that is a fun sentence to say aloud. Each of the different solutions went into an ice cube tray section where they became popsicles and she further observed the differences. It was a fun experiment as she understands the concept pretty well now, and even got to drink Kool-Aid, which is a rare treat in our house.