Solids, Liquids and Gases

One of the younger students' science classes, started out exploring how to describe "mystery" objects.  Pairs of students were given bags with one object inside and had to come up with five words that described how these objects felt.  Students' lists included words such as: bendy, fluffy, hard, soft, rough, smooth, sharp and silky.  


When we gathered back together as a group, pairs that didn't know what was in a mystery bag tried to guess based on the 5 descriptive words.  After we discussed the descriptive words, the teacher pulled out one more mystery bag.  She told the students that their mystery objects were one type of object and the new mystery object she had would be classified differently.  There was a brief discussion on how all their mystery objects could be the "same" (a shell, a flag, a teddy bear and a feather) until a bag of water was pulled from the teacher's bag!  Then students knew that their objects were "solids" and the  teacher's object was a liquid.  


During the second class, we further explored solids by challenging each student to build the "tallest" tower only given paper cups, foil, tape, straws, cardboard, paper, rubber bands and popsicle sticks.  We first explored the solids we could use and talked about what would be "sturdy" and would help build a large tower.  


We will continue to explore solids, then move on to liquids and then gases!