Sink and Float explorations

I am a little behind in blogging lately.  We had a busy summer and the school year is maintaining about the same pace.  When planning activities for the month I always feel uneasy when our 'Art' time activity is a hands on exploration activity and there isn't really anything to send home.  I KNOW the children are learning from it but as a parent myself it's always nice to see/hear about what they did.  I thought a blog would be perfect for today.  Since the kids are resting I will try to get this up before they begin to awake. 

Our Preschool theme this year is Under the Sea.  In our discussion of fish, we of course have to talk about fishing.  I thought what better way to introduce sinking and floating than with bobbers and weights.  Honestly I wasn't sure how well this would go or how interested the kids would be in it.  I showed them my tackle box. I showed them the bobbers, weights and worms that I had.  (I even included some little fish squirters)

I had two shoe box totes (one for the Toddler class--"The Minnows" and one for the Older pre-k's --"The Jellyfish.")  I put water in each one and let them experiment putting these items in  the water.   

The Toddlers are content just dropping the items in and seeing how big a splash they make and how much water they can splash out onto the table.  The first two boys of the Jellyfish group start off dropping each item in  to see what it does. Then they try dropping the weights on the bobbers to see if they will push them down. They were wondering how the bobbers worked on a fishing pole and as I was showing them that if you push down a hook will appear, "G" Guitar suggested , "Let's hook the weight on it." 

Then we tried it to see what happened and compared it to a bobber without a weight. 

The Minnows weren't so sure about the weight being on the bobber and "T" Turtle asked me take it off.

Everyone enjoyed trying this activity.  Hopefully they will share their discoveries with their families, if not tonight, maybe someday when they go fishing. :)