Summer is coming! Use the seasons throughout the year to explore the concept of temperature. For example, temperature is relative: In winter, you may feel really hot entering the house when you’re coming in from the cold but after sitting in the house for a while, you may start to feel cold. Getting out of a hot shower makes the bathroom feel cold. Playing with this phenomenon is a wonderful way to engage children with the concept of temperature and extend their vocabulary, no matter the season. Read on to discover an age-appropriate activity idea related to testing temperature using everyday materials.
Planning other summer or temperature-related STEM activities for your children? Join Little Scientists’ Facebook group “Early STEM Educators Network” to exchange engaging STEM ideas with other educators about the seasons and STEM learning.
Temperature Activity
Materials:
☀️ A bowl of cold water (from a cold tap)
☀️ A bowl of room-temperature water (leave water out for a few hours before the activity)
☀️ A bowl of warm water
Instructions:
- Discuss today’s temperature with the children: Is it a hot day or a cold day? Was morning tea hot or cold? If you feel cold, how do you dress? How do you cool down?
- Set up a three bowls with cold, warm, and hot water.
3. Invite the children dip their hands in cold water and then in room-temperature water. Have them describe how it feels. Do their hands feel warmer going from the cold water to the room-temperature water?
4. Repeat the previous step, this time dipping their hands in the warm water, then into the room-temperature water. Does the room-temperature water feel colder? Why might that happen?
NOTE: Ensure that the cold and warm water are not extreme (for example, don’t use ice or boiling water). Remember that prolonged exposure to very cold or hot water can be a problem, so monitor this activity carefully.
What’s the STEM?
This playful activity supports children to extend their vocabulary of temperature. The idea that people experience temperature differently and that ‘hotness’ is not fixed can be fascinating to children. Once the children have experienced differing opinions on what is hot and what is not, a conversation about why we need thermometers can take place.
Extension ideas: Thermometers
It’s important to introduce the thermometer at a point where the numbers on it mean something to the children and explain why we need accurate measurements of temperature. For example:
🌡️ Create a paper thermometer. Tape a strip of red paper to some white paper, and stick the ends together so it loops around in a complete circle. You can then move the temperature up and down, indicated by how much red paper is visible when looking at it front-on.
🌡️ Draw a thermometer on the whiteboard and invite the children to use a marker colour in what the temperature feels like. You could even make this a morning routine to colour in the thermometer and see how the temperature changes day-to-day!
The numbers may not mean much to the children, especially the younger ones, but the visual observation that warm water (or weather) makes red paper or colour rise and that cold water makes it fall may help explain the concepts in an age-appropriate way. For your thermometer creations, you might use descriptive language or adjectives (e.g. “hot”, “cold”) instead of numbers, depending on the children’s ages.
Use your explorations to introduce STEM vocabulary related to temperature and comparison to the children, for example: hot, hotter, cold, colder, freezing, cool, warm, boiling, thermometer, very cold.
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