Sink or Float

I'll admit that science experiments are not my favorite part of homeschooling. Mostly because I don't like gathering the supplies. It's also hard to find the right time to do an experiment with little ones around.

This year we are studying chemistry and the experiments have been really fun. Right now we are studying matter. Recently, we did a float or sink experiment involving the three states of matter and density. A activity with water is always fun for preschoolers, so this was great for Finn. It was also fun for the older kids to guess which items would float and which would sink and also to understand the reasons behind the results.




These are all of the items we tested. I really enjoyed the orange with a peel vs. orange without. (The orange with a peel floats because of the gas trapped between the peel and the solid orange, since gas is less dense than the liquid water. When you peel the orange it sinks, because the solid orange is more dense than the liquid water.)

At the end, we guessed how many marbles it would take to sink our "boat" and then added them one by one.