This half-term we have carried out many differing investigations. These include a colour experiment, sinking and floating and a volcano experiment.

Colour experiment-First we spoke about what the objects we used looked like, how did the skittle and plate feel, where they hard, smooth, what did they smell of? We then predicted what would happen if we poured warm water onto a plate of skittles. Some of the children's responses where great. Some children thought the skittles would melt, whilst some thought the skittles would make a 3D rainbow up and over the plate!
We conducted our experiment, and was excited when all of the colours started to run from the skittle! We learnt what the word 'dissolved' meant, and that the warm water had dissolved the colour from the skittle into the water to make a lovely rainbow pattern on the plate, but I then said to the children 'I wonder where the colour has come from, as from what we could see the skittles still had the colour. One child said "I wonder if its from underneath". We investigated together, and yes the colour had ran from underneath the skittle. All of the skittles underneath had turned white as the colour had dissolved.
I then posed the idea of ' I wonder if it would happen if we used cold water'. A child then said, shall we see! So, we conducted a further experiment using cold water, some of the children didn't think it would work as the water is too cold, but to our amazement the water still dissolved the colour from the skittles, but the colour leaked quicker. One child said they thought it was because it was a smaller plate we was using!
We then spoke about what we thought might happen if we moved the plate...lots of amazing thoughts and ideas from the children, and we watched as the colours all mixed together as we moved the plate.
After the initial experiment the children continued with this learning, and said they could smell the skittles, the children smelt the skittles, "its smells sweet". We then went on to further our investigating and link to our learning this week of printing. We used paper to put down on the colour, but we noticed that the experiment with the warm water picked up the colour, and the cold water didnt! we then let the paper dry, and found that we made sweet smelling paper, it was great

Volcano- As we have been talking about features of the world, through our bear stories, such as caves, bridges, etc the children have shown a particular interest in volcanoes which led Mrs Glentworth to talk more about them and watch videos on them erupting. We then carried out an experiment today which showed the children how the volcano erupts and the lava flowing out. The children absolutely loved it! The vinegar was a bit smelly!

We learnt the words volcano, eruption and lava!