Learning to Be a Scientist: Week 2, Day 3

Continuing Learning to Be a Scientist: the second concept is "Scientists sort items and name categories," third activity is "Sorting Materials."

"Bang, bang!"

We started with three plates. One made of plastic, one made of metal (pie pan,) and one made of paper as a stand-in for wood. I then gave the kids a bunch of items and had them sort them by material. Early Bird figured out right away that the metal pie pan makes a cool sound when banged, so that is what he did. Luckily I bought a two pack so I had one for him to play with and one for the big kids to put metal things in.

There was a lot of back and forth with the bigger kids about what was what. I think they misidentified plastic things the most. There were lots of things to sort, so that took some time. George's little sister (in the red shirt) was here, too, and she was very interested in what we were doing. Then they went on a scavenger hunt to find one thing made of plastic, one made of wood, and one made of metal (I let them go into the utensil drawer for that.) Once they had found something of each material George and Builder Boy cut and pasted the pictures into the correct category on the accompanying worksheet. Early Bird and Little Sister played with toys and kept away from the scissors.

After we they were done with that we talked a bit about different materials. Builder Boy had gotten the idea that everything that is metal is magnetic, since everything from our last activity that was magnetic was metal. So I got out the magnets again and we tested all the metal items to show that not all metal things are magnetic.

Builder Boy is very interested in recycling, so we read a book about different things that can be recycled and how. Then I let them play the Starfall.com (awesome, free, educational website) Earth Day recycling/sorting game and the Sid the Science Kid Recycling Game. In the Sid the Science Kid game you sort paper, plastic, and metal trash on the ground. You have to click on objects that move around and it was too hard for Early Bird (age 3) to play. The Starfall.com game is easier, but still fun.

George Got a Haircut!

After a break for lunch George and Builder Boy made the My Little Book of Materials mini-book, drawing a picture of something plastic, wood, metal, glass, paper, cloth, something made of more than one material, and something they didn't know what it was made out of.  Now they are watching the Sid the Science Kid episode on recycling (Builder Boy loves that one and we have it on dvd.) And that's it for science for the week!  I'm glad George was able to visit for three days this week so we could do all of the activities together.


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Sid the Science Kid has one episode available at a time on the PBSKids.org website, but they only change it every month (I think.) I searched for it on Hulu and it showed four full episodes and other clips on a different part of the site. The show is no longer available on Netflix Instant Streaming. I do not have an Amazon Instant Video subscription, but I was able to find one episode on there (I can't tell if there are more.)

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