Water's skin

The girls got to see the "skin" on top of water today. First we filled the cup ever so slowly so that they could see how the water bulged over the top of the cup - held in place by the skin.

Then we even manged to get a needle to float on top of the skin. A steady hand is needed as the needle naturally wants to sink. Then we took a toothpick and put some dish washing liquid on it. As soon as the toot pick touched the water the skin was made too thin (from the dish washing liquid) and so the needle instantly sank.

Then the girls made their own submarine. When filled up with water this bottle sinks. But when air is put in it comes up to the surface.

Sinking boats

Today their task was to find different things to act as boats for the cargo of marbles that we had.
They had so much fun counting the marbles and seeing how many we could get in before the boat sank.

We were also able to see how cargo is put in different sections of a boat so that it does not topple over. We used this small Frisbee and put blue tack (prestic) in to make 4 sections. So many more marble are able to fit on this way. Without the blue tack it toppled over so quickly.

Water's force and floating things

Ruth has had fun doing water experiments this week. Today we saw how water has a force and pushes against the balloon when you push it into the water.

The girls collected a whole lot of things from their art room and Ruth sorted them into what she thought would float or sink.

At first almost everything that they had collected floated.

I showed them how if the lids (or peg) got filled with water they would sink. We also watched over time to see how the different types of paper absorbed water and then sank (to different levels). It did not take long for Ruth to work out what would sink and then she was able to look for a few things that she knew would go down.

My body

 Ruth really enjoyed making an outline of her body and then labeling it. She wanted to write each word herself so I wrote on a scrap paper and she copied each word.
It was lovely to see how many names Ruth knew. We only put on what she could remember. When we spoke about ankles she told me that her ankle is what allows her to move her foot to walk. She then went through all the other joints in her body (including her spine) and told me how they helped her to move.
 She always enjoys painting but does not get to do it often. The paints that I mix always end up going mouldy but today I found some old finger paint that was now so runny that it worked really well with a brush.


We also had fun drawing the head outline of everyone else in the family to see how we all compare. Dad only just managed to fit on the paper.