What's the Matter?

I cannot fathom how much my class this year loves Science! I try so very hard to fit it in as much as possible. One of the most fun things I have taught so far is matter.

It seems like such a hard concept for them to grasp...at least "the teacher" thought. But my 21 (now 22) little minons decided to prove me wrong {which I have NO problem with!}.

 

 

What is matter? Why it's anything that takes up space if you must ask.

So we completed an experiment to prove just that. I took 4 cups filled with the same amount of water. I made sure to mark where the water line stood before placing and object in the cup.

 

Nothing was put into cup #1.

A  marble was put into cup #2.

A ball of clay was put into cup #3.

A wooden block was put into cup #4.

 

This simply shows that objects, no matter what it is, take up space.

The little smartypants also discovered that the bigger the object, the more space it takes up!

 

To conclude our activity, we read a poem about matter and added it to our interactive science journal. We colored all the objects in the poem that we could consider matter.

 

I'm sure my "science eyes" {which I kept from college} had something to do with their enthusiasm about learning!

 

Now back to matter...

Brainpop has an excellent video to help introduce solids, liquids, and gases. We learned about solids first and recorded the definition along with some examples we found in the classroom in our science journals.

 

Next up, we learned about liquids.

We had a race with 3 different types of liquids: water, honey, and oil.

After filling out our experiment form, we put a drop of each on the start line, tilted the pan up, and watched to see which one crossed the finish line first. We made sure to discuss why some moved quicker than others.

 

 

We took what we knew about liquids and tried turning them into solids. We made predictions of what we thought would happen and observed the actual changing state of matter. We performed this to see what would happen if we turned a liquid into a solid and then from a solid to a liquid.

 

On our last day, we took our schema about matter and went outside to find the 3 states of matter on a science scavenger hunt.

 

We concluded that is was much easier to observe solids and liquids than it was gases!