Pre-K Investigates Water on Wood and Paper

Pre-K has been investigating what happens when water is put on different types of wood and different types of paper.

Look, the wood is darker.

The wood is sticking together!

Sometimes it's hard to use the droppers.

The dark wood is darker and the light wood is lighter.

The water changes the color of the paper, just like the wood.

The water stays in drops.

So many different papers and something happens to them all!

I have a paper sandwich.

This is bumpy paper.

Look!

I can push the water.

Watching the water.

More exploring.

Kindergarten Sinks Wood!

Kindergarteners already know a lot about wood!  They know what wood looks, feels like and that it changes color when it gets wet.  They also know that wood floats.  Our newest challenge is...how to make the wood sink!

Our supplies are a bin of water, two wood samples, paper clips and rubber bands.  How can we use those items to make the wood samples sink to the bottom of the bin?

We came up with the idea to put the rubber band on the wood and put the paper clips under the rubber band!

My wood is still floating!

Some of the paper clips are all connected.

For the wood to sink, it has to be on the bottom!

Adding more paper clips.

I think this might sink!

Yes!  It is sinking!

I need more paper clips!

We did it!

Look at all the paper clips.  I think it's going to sink!

We need more paper clips! 

Attached paper clips can be so hard to get undone!

The paper clips fell off!

A technique that seemed to work was putting paper clips
on all four sides of the wood.

In the end, most of the classes were able to sink their wood samples.  As a challenge, students tried to figure out if both wood samples needed the same number of paper clips to make it sink.  The results were mixed, but many agreed that the pine wood needed more paper clips than the plywood.

Kindergarten Explores Wood!

Kindergarteners have started their unit on wood and paper!  We are first looking at wood and it's many properties!  The classes are learning to describe wood by using their senses.

Five different types of wood.

We can make a tower with the wood.

The wood is smooth.

One of the pieces of wood is bumpy!

It's a zig zag.

The wood smells weird.

It is fun to build towers with wood.

We wrote how the wood looks, feels and smells.

More towers!

Looking closely at the wood.

Drawing the wood.

Kindergarten Sinks Wood!

Kindergarteners already discovered that wood floats and were now given the challenge to sink wood!  They had two samples of wood (plywood and pine wood) along with rubber bands and paperclips.  They decided that they should attach the paperclips to the wood to make it heavier!

I sunk the plywood!

Techniques varied.  Some put paperclips on all four sides of the wood.  Some put all the paperclips on one side of the wood.  Both ways seemed to work the same.

 We discovered that the pine wood needed more paperclips than the plywood because the plywood is heavier than the pine wood.

For the wood to sink, it has to be on the bottom
of the container.

We were surprised at how many paperclips we needed to sink the wood!

Kindergarten Looks at Wood!

Who knew wood was so interesting?  Kindergarteners do!  We have been looking at the properties of wood samples and describing what we see.  Some of the wood pieces were hard (linden) and others were soft (pine); some were rough (plywood and particle board) while others were smooth (redwood, pine and linden).  We noticed the different colors of the wood and we all agreed that the redwood didn't smell very good!

How long is the wood sample?

The wood is smooth.

Look!

I'm not sure how it smells.

Tada!

Sometimes you just need to build!

This is such a tall tower!

Next we put water on the wood to see what happens.  We had some big surprises!

The redwood gets darker when it's wet.

Look!  The wood sticks together when it gets wet!

Some of the wood looks lighter.

At first the water looks like bubbles.

Water, water everywhere!

We made predictions about whether the wood samples would sink or float.....and they all floated!