States of Matter for Little Learners {with a freebie}

I never do science related posts so I’m going out on a limb here and acting like I know what I’m doing when it comes to science. I’m exaggerating…but really….I don’t consider it my strength. I have been making an effort to make it my strength and engage my kids in more meaningful science activities so here are some things we have been doing for States of Matter.

These books have been great! I began with the stages of water last week and then this week we have gotten more specific with each state of matter.

Last week, to get familiar with the vocabulary, we went through this emergent reader and highlighted the vocabulary that I wanted them to carry over with them to this week.

On Monday, we HAD to get out of the classroom so it was perfect for the “solid search”. I had the kiddos pair up and we quietly walked through the halls because our case of indoor recess fever was getting a little high 🙂

The students had to label and quickly sketch 8 different solids they found on their hunt.

I gave them a few minutes to “add detail” to their pictures when we got back to the classroom.

On Tuesday, we did a little sink/float experiment. Lakeshore has a great STEM science kit that is perfect for this concept.

But it’s kind of pricey and there are so many other ways that you can teach this with objects that you have lying around your house or classroom. We used a tennis ball, block, penny, crayon, dice, pencil, shell and eraser.

Before we did the experiment, I had them make predictions (talked about how scientists make a hypothesis before but I didn’t delve too deep in to that…I kept the language with what they already knew ). They had to write one object that they thought would sink and one that would float. Then, we did the experiment and sorted the objects based on if they float or sank. You have to watch them because some will try to be sneaky and go back to erase their predictions. They don’t like being wrong but I try to explain that it’s part of how we learn.

Bless their little hearts.

Then, we went back to see if our predictions were right.

Today was my assessment day. I wanted to see if they “got” it.

I don’t have any pictures for you for this activity because we are going to do it tomorrow 🙂

Hope you can use it! You can find the above activities and more here.