Our favourite 3: Water
Floating and sinking, buoyancy, engineering, sustainability – the list of joyful explorations you can start from water play is endless.
Water
Alexander’s outing
How to get a little duck out of a hole? The story can spark STEM explorations, including problem-solving tasks and engineering challenges.
Clean up the mess
Impactful early experiences help create lifelong personal values. Cleaning your local stream or building a water purification system could ignite children’s passion for sustainability.
Sparkling water
At Little Scientists, we are all about spotting STEM opportunities in the everyday. Exploring with sparkling water, or to children more commonly known as fizzy water, might not be an everyday occurrence but is a fascinating way to introduce gases (in this case carbon dioxide) and if you have access to a soda stream, it could be even more fun!
Sinking or floating: Fruit
One of our wonderful Local Network Partners up in North Queensland, Jim Callan, contacted me the other day to talk about a new STEM exploration called floating oranges. He told me that oranges with peel on float and if you take the peel o , they sink. He challenged me to nd out whether it worked for other fruit.
Sinking or floating: Liquids
Oil at sea can be a problem. In 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill discharged 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, of which only 810,000 barrels of oil were collected. It was the largest marine oil spill in history. As a result, much of the oil was washed ashore by the tide making the beach dirty and causing massive problems for wildlife.
What melts?
At Little Scientists, we love this activity. Science with a bit of spice! In this activity we want to find out, which spices helps melt the ice fastest! Let the children choose their own spices and let them explain why they choose their spice selection!
Water filtration systems
When a child at Southern Montessori School drank dirty water in the mud kitchen, it started a discussion on drinking water. After watching a video about places without access to clean water, the children decided to invent a water filtration system.
The crocodile who didn’t like water
Discuss animal and human behaviours based on this story about finding the balance of trying to fit in while accepting your differences.