Mudpies to Magnets

My sister, who is a teacher in Denver, and I had a talk one time about how tough it is to teach science. There are so many things to cover, but not the best resources to teach the subject. One of my favorite books for teaching preschool and kindergarten science is this book:

MUDPIES TO MAGNETS, BY
 WILLIAMS, ROCKWELL AND SHERWOOD

The book cover states that it is a "Preschool Science Curriculum", but I've found many experiments to be perfect for kindergarten. I use this book nearly every week in my homeschool science. I also use the sequel to this book, called "More Mudpies to Magnets" by the same authors. I highly recommend this curriculum guide, as it uses lots of items for the experiments which can easily be found in the home.

Since this past week was R week, we used one experiment about raisins, called "Dunking Raisins".

The experiment used a glass jar, water and vinegar with three raisins in it. We stirred the vinegar in to the water with raisins, then we added a few teaspoons of baking soda. Of course, this causes a reaction, which it explains in a simple manner in the book. The CO2 bubbles (which it also explains) attach to the raisins, and after watching for a few moments, will float to the top of the vinegar/ water solution. This elicited the "WOW" effect from my children, who smelled it and watched it for about an hour! The raisins kept bobbing up and down!

We liked that the book simply explains the cause and effect relationship, and that the experiment was easy enough for all ages to understand. My son had seen this experiment before, but still found it fascinating!

We did another experiment this week from the above book, in which the rain cycle was illustrated. We sealed a ziploc bag with tape, filled it with 1/2 cup of water, sealed the top and hung it on our glass door to the outside. Then we watched it for a few days, and inside the bag there is a miniature cloud, and condensation occurring! It is so cool to see, but hard to keep hands off! 

If you have not seen this amazing science book before, I whole-heartedly recommend you find and use it. We enjoy it a lot!