Five Senses

We've started getting to the real meat of the curriculum now, and in Science, we've focused on the Scientific Method and using our five senses to explore the world around us.

Last week, I introduced the five senses by asking the kiddos to close their eyes and use their sense of hearing and smell to figure out what was happening:

Once they knew, they were able to say it out loud and use their sense of sight to watch it pop.

Of course they got to use their sense of touch and taste to enjoy a snack!

On Wednesday, we had a problem to solve.  Using each of our senses, we recorded our observations about unlabeled salt and sugar trying to figure out which was which:

I like that one of the comments was "salt will taste salty and sugar will taste sugary!" ;)

On Friday, we talked about the steps of the Scientific Method (ask a question, form a hypothesis, test your hypothesis, observe and record what happens, come to a conclusion) and I asked the kiddos what would happen when I mixed water, glue, borax, and food coloring.  I got guesses ranging from "honey milk" to "soda" to "cookies" to "play-doh."   We discussed how it couldn't be something edible since two of the ingredients (borax and glue) weren't edible to begin with.  Play-doh was the closest guess!  We got slime!

(To make your own slime, mix 1/2c glue and 1/2c water in a bowl.   Add food coloring for colored slime. In a separate bowl, mix 1tsp borax with 1c hot water until the borax is dissolved.  Add the glue mixture to the borax solution, stirring slowly.  The slime will start to form! If it's too liquidy, add a little more borax.  Don't worry if it gets too grainy/thick at first. It's better to be more solid than more liquidy.   The more you knead it, the better the consistency will become.)

Today we followed up on the steps of the Scientific Method and asked another question: Which liquid  (water, milk, lime juice, soda) will help prevent apples from turning brown?

We have to revisit this experiment tomorrow for the conclusion.  The bell rang before any serious browning happened!