School's Out and Unplugged Science Volcano's and Sound

Youpi, May 2009

Friday was the last day of school for two weeks. We've been pretty busy with end of term meetings and outings, and now we have to prepare Marie-Kate's 5th birthday and a trip to London.

We did manage to do this weeks unplugged project, thanks to Alexis's monthly magazine "Youpi". This months theme was Volcano's.

Marie-Kate carried on this experiment because it was safe and easy. She made a volcano using some flour and soda.

She made the crater with her finger

The gas from the soda pushed the flour and the soda up and out of the crater, making it overflow like in a real eruption. Once the soda (magma)had lost its gas, the lava flowed down around the sides of her volcano.

I'd recommend this magazine to anyone, it's really super for children aged 5 to 8 years old. All my children have this magazine and loved it when they were younger. If anyone wants to swap some of our Youpi's for some something similar in English, that would be great.

Experiment N°2 Sound Waves





bowl covered with sandwich wrap

Alexis and Gabrielle decided to experiment with sound after watching a science programme for kids on Arte.

Scatter some rice over the top

Turn the music up ( Bryan Adams)



The noise makes the air vibrate, the noise is transmitted through the air, to the plastic. The plastic vibrates and the rice dances. The children loved this one.

Floating and Sinking

Today the children (Marie-Kate, 4 and Alexis, 7) drew up a chart of things they thought would float and sink for this weeks unplugged "water" project. After finishing the list they filled up a bowl from the kitchen to see if they were right or not.

On their list they wrote a bottle top (in plastic), a marble, some plasticine, a plastic bottle, a glass bottle, an apple, a yogurt pot and some grains of rice.

They used a spot of paint either at the bottom on top of water to show which things they would float or sink.

They were right about the bottle top ( sorry, I forgot the photo, they did it too quickly!) it floated. Then they decided to sink it by putting water inside
and then by throwing it in the water.










Next up, they put the marble in the water, it sunk, they were certain it would, however, Alexis knew he could make it float, first he flattened some plasticine and made it into a bowl shape, this didn't float either with the marble in, but alone it did. He got the plastic yogurt pot and put the marble inside, it sank too. Finally it worked when he put a little water in the pot and gently placed it, with the marble inside in the water.








Both bottles floated, but they would sink if filled with water














Above is the finished chart, it's a bit messy as the paint smudged when Marie-Kate leant over it.

Later I'll add on what Gabrielle decided to do for her unplugged project.