What Absorbs Water?
Materials needed:
Styrofoam Tray
Bowl with colored water
Eye dropper
Sponge
Cotton Balls
Variety of ‘papers’=construction paper, paper towel, wax paper, aluminum foil, plastic wrap
Recording sheet (see below)
Create your recording sheet. Divide a large sheet of paper into thirds. One column will be titled ‘Object’; another will be for predictions; the last is to chart what actually happened.
Recording Sheet: Absorption Absorption
OBJECT PREDICTION ACTUAL
styrofoam tray Yes No Yes No
sponge Yes No Yes No
cotton balls Yes No Yes No
construction paper Yes No Yes No
paper towel Yes No Yes No
wax paper Yes No Yes No
aluminum foil Yes No Yes No
plastic wrap Yes No Yes No
Continue adding the objects onto the recording sheet. Then ask your child(ren) to guess(predict) what (s)he thinks will happen when (a single drop of) colored water is dropped onto the object from the eye-dropper. Record the prediction by circling the corresponding answer under the PREDICTION column.
After predicting what will happen for all the objects, the next step is to test the hypothesis!
Record the results in the corresponding ACTUAL column.
Discuss the results. Ask what’s alike with the objects that absorbed the colored water and what’s alike with the objects that didn’t? Are there any similarities?
EXTENDING the learning…encourage your kidlet to continue to add water to those objects that absorbed water to find the saturation point—that amount where the object cannot absorb or contain any more water. How do you know you’ve reached that point? Is it the same for each object? Clean up using the sponge!
Yours in Play!
Teacher Karen