Unplug your kids - float

We did three different activities for float, spread out over the whole week.

First, one very hot afternoon, I half-filled a tub with water and brought out Wombat's bowl of magnetic/non-magnetic objects. He did a little bit of sorting into floats/sinks but was much more interested in "sink" lol...



Then I showed him how some of the objects he had classified as 'sink' (a shell and a metal bell) would actually float if placed carefully on the surface of the water.



Other interesting explorations involved trying to sink something 'unsinkable' - the plastic shower curtain ring, which floated to the top each time it was sunk; trying to float something 'unfloatable' - the heavy spring, which floated in its jar-lid boat; and the half-and-half - the fuzzy yarn which floated until it got waterlogged and then sank.



The next 'float' activity involved a little preparation. I used some plastic packaging from a tray of custard tarts, and froze some very diluted watercolour paint.



Here are the frozen colours...



We then played with floating them in our tub of water and watching them melt.



I must admit, I probably found them more fascinating than Wombat - the way the colour had formed tree-like rings as it froze was very pretty...



Wombat had some fun swirling them and trying to sink them, and generally playing floating iceberg games...



for about five minutes... and then they were all melted away lol... (it was another VERY HOT afternoon)



On Monday we had a cool change, with a little rain, providing the perfect chance to get outside after more than a week of being cooped up by the heat. I wanted to make sure Wombat burned off as much energy as possible, so I 'floated' some balloons around the yard, tying them to trees and clotheslines with pipecleaners.



We played 'bop the balloon' with me yelling out "Bop the red balloon" etc. This gave us a chance to work on colour recognition too. Wombat is really good with his colours, but he tends to mix up blue/purple and pink/white so we will be working on those a bit more.



I tried to vary things a bit by suggesting jump, skip, walk backwards etc, but he wasn't interested in stepping outside his comfort zone, so I 'ordered' myself to do those things to show him what I meant. I didn't think he'd enjoyed the game all that much as he stopped following directions after a little while. I got him to direct me for a bit and then the game ended. When I took the balloons down, though, he insisted that he wanted to play again, so I think this is an activity we will keep and grow with over time.

You can see more great unplugged interpretations of float over at Unplug your Kids. Next week's project is: wrinkle.