January 13, 2017
Happy New Year! We begin our Wade Thomas science hour with a nod to the winter. First, before we delved into states of matter, kids learned about investigating properties of an object. They measured the weight and length and width of an ice cube using a scale and a ruler. They watched ice melt and learned that the mass of their melted ice cube would remain the same. We showed three balloons: one with gas, one filled with water, and another with frozen water. Kids dropped their ice cubes in a tub where ice was melting, i.e. solid was turning into liquid. At another table, we turned a liquid into a solid by making fake snow. Several children shared a job of shaking a jar of whipped cream and made butter (liquid to solid transformation). And to create gas, kids mixed baking soda and vinegar and watched a balloon fill with carbon dioxide. It was a messy, fun and memorable way to learn about the three basic states of matter.
Vocabulary: Matter, Property of an object, Shape, Mass, Volume, Phases of Matter, Changing Phases, Solids, Liquids, Gases
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