How we began
At first, we read the book ‘ Who Sank the Boat’ to introduce the topic of floating and sinking. The children were curious to see which animal sank the boat, making predictions throughout the reading of the book.
Introducing the song
We wanted to be involved in the process as much as possible so we learned a song to stimulate and further our learning to the tune of Oh When the Saints, go Marching in.
Discussing the Experiment
The children learned that they were going to be doing an experiment based on floating and sinking. The children were told of the materials which were needed which were: raisins, 7up, 2 cups and later on some water.
Making Predictions
The children made predictions based on whether they thought the raisins would float or sink in the 7up drawing pictures based on what they thought would happen. They also predicted using the thumbs up/thumbs down method,identifying whether they thought the raisins would float or sink.
Carrying out the experiment
The experiment was carried out as a whole class and different children were picked to carry out different elements of the experiments. The children were excited to see whether the raisins were floating or sinking but it turned out they were ‘dancing’.
What did we find out?
We discovered that the raisins were collecting the gas bubbles at the end of the 7up, allowing them to becoming lighter and they were then floating and sinking for the length of time that the 7up was fizzy. We loved watching the dancing raisins!
Next…
At the end of the experiment, we tried to carry out the same experiment using water. The raisins did not dance in the water because they were heavier than the liquid and they sank to the bottom.
