Does your boat float?

Materials:

• 10 straws

• rubber bands (or tape)

• string

• tub for water

• pennies

Challenge:

You will design and build a boat that will hold the most pennies possible before sinking!

Directions:

On a piece of paper, draw and label a sketch of your boat.

Questions to think about:

How many pennies did your boat hold?

What can you do to improve your boat?

What would you do differently next time?

Float and Sink

For this activity, you will be testing to see whether certain things float or sink!

Materials Needed:

Tubs of water

Small items that will float

Small items that will sink

Towels

Directions:

1. Fill tubs with water.

2. Make a prediction before you put the item in.

3. Begin testing your items.

4. Keep track of what floats and what sinks.

Examples of things that sink:

Pebble

Penny

Marble

Toy fish (like a math manipulative fish)

Examples of things that float:

Bottle Cap

Feather

Unifix cube

Small piece of paper

Questions to think about at the end:

• Why did some items float and some items think?

• Try a banana first in its peel and then take it out of the peel. What happened?

Send me pictures of you doing the experiment!

Animal colors and patterns lesson from the Art Farm

Animals have different colors and patterns that help them to survive in the wild. These different colors and patterns are an animals’ way of camouflaging. Camouflage is when an animal blends into its surroundings. For example, if you have joined us at the Art Farm, then you might have met our Walking Stick Insects. These insects are amazing at camouflage, they look just like branches or sticks on a tree and this helps protect them from potential predators by making them well hidden from plain sight. They can even sway from side to side as if they were a branch moving in the wind. Some other animals have patterned colorations like spots or stripes that make it hard to determine their outlines helping them to hide. And some animals like poison dart frogs, are brightly colored to warn predators that even though they are tiny, they are quite lethal if ingested.

Check out these two videos about animal colors and patterns:

A pattern is just a design repeated over and over. Practice creating patterns with your child. Grab as many toy animals as you can find. I’m sure you will be able to create an endless amount of patterns with the animals that you find. First ask your child if they can think of any ways to sort the animals. Maybe sort based on size, like all the elephants and giraffes would go in one pile and the rabbits and cats would go in another pile (big, small) or have them sort by types of animals. All the cats would go together (tigers, lions, house cats, etc.) and maybe all the different kinds of whales or turtles can go together. You can also classify your animals based on patterns, stripes vs. spots, and so on. Then see if your child can create a pattern with the sorted piles of animals (this is also a great way to get your child involved in tidying up all those random toy animals lying around!). Then see if your child can sort them in colors and create a rainbow of animals.

Check out these readings of some books on colors and patterns:

Inventor Scavenger Hunt!

Scientists, can you…

• Find something that you can turn

• Find something that is bumpy

• Find something that is metal

• Find three things that are round

• Find something that you twist

• Find something shiny

• Find something that you can roll

• Find a tube

• Find 3 things that are squishy

• Find something clear

• Find something you can bounce

Watch a video read aloud of What If You Had Animal Ears?

• Choose one animal from the book.

• Draw what you would look like with ears from that animal.

• What you would do if you had those animals ears?

• If you can, take a picture to email to Ms. Jamie at jamie.goose@ps158.net!

You can also take a virtual trip to the zoo if you want to choose an animal not mentioned in the book! --> San Diego Zoo Kids Website

Stay tuned for a live read aloud of one of my favorite tree books this week!!!

Here are some fun animal movement book read alouds!

Yoga Frog by Nora Carpenter

Move! by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

Barnyard Dance! by Sandra Boynton

Happy Spring!!!!

Spring officially began on March 19th