Science: Float or Sink

I decided to do a fun little science experiment with my 7-year-old son a couple weeks ago. This takes hardly any time to set up and you have all of your supplies lying around your house. How great is that? I love an easy project that doesn't cost anything that my son finds fun! Plus, he's learning something along the way.

First, I had Owen walk around the house and find 15 things that wouldn't be ruined by water. I told him we were going to see if which ones sink and which ones float so make sure you pick out a variety of things so that not all of them sink or that not all of them float.

Then, we found a large bowl or small bucket (just make sure all the things you picked out with fit). We filled our bowl half full with water. We folded a towel in half to put next to our bowl so that we would have someplace to put our items after we took them out of the water.

I then prepped a piece of paper to fill out so that we could record our results that included 3 columns for items, prediction, and result. I wrote in each item and then we made our predictions.

Then it was finally time to put everything together and see which ones sink and which ones float. We did one item at a time. Owen ended up guessing 14 out of our 15 items correctly! I think that's pretty good. Then, we talked about why each individual item floated or sank. 7-year-olds now-a-days are pretty smart!

One of the great things about this little experiment is that you could adapt it to any age group. I easily could have done this with my 3-year-old preschool class when I was teaching. But you could even do it with 5th graders! I think the biggest difference is deciding how much freedom the kids have in picking out items and then the conversation afterwards about why each item floats or sinks and how in-depth you get with it. Either way, it's a fun little experiment to do with kids!