This week in nursery we have been celebrating Bristish science week with a variety of experiments.
We have been learning about The Gingerbread man, and we decided to test which liquid puddles were the safest for him to fall into.
We used our spare Gingerbread men that we baked last week and tested them to see if they were “hard” or “soft”. Some of us gave them a little tap on the table just to make sure. The overall opinion was that they were hard.
The children set out four bowl to hold our different puddle liquids in. They then filled them, one with water, one with vinegar, one with oil and one with red food colouring.
Next the children carefully placed one Gingerbread man in each puddle and let him have a little swim.
The children watched and observed what was happening to each of them during this time. They observed that the one in water “sank” very quickly and “got bigger” as it absorbed the water. The one in food colouring started to “change colour” and “turn red” and then slowly “sunk”. The one in vinegar sank the “slowly.” And finally, the gingerbread man in oil still “floated” on top of the oil.
The children then took turns to rescue the Gingerbread men from the puddles. The children saw that three of the Gingerbread men had “gone soft” and “broke” when they tried to save them. Only the Gingerbread man in the oil stayed hard and did not break.
Together the children decided that the safest puddle for the Gingerbread man to fall in to is a puddle of oil.
0-3, 3-4 years UW, M, PSED
