Exploring Water {Science with the Magic School Bus}

Are you familiar with the Magic School Bus Science Kits? It is a 12 month subscription that delivers science activities right to your door. Each month is a different theme. With our monthly Magic School Bus Science Kits, we have made a Volcano, studied the Stars & Planets, and have made a Wind Vane so far.

We've gotten slightly off track from completing our Magic School Bus Science Kits now that our homeschool year is underway. However, one day lent us some extra time to spare so we pulled out our science kit that we received last month. The science kit was all about water. It was a very easy package to jump into as all we needed to supply was a few containers and water, of course!

The experiments in this month's kit were:

Sink or Float Activity

Make a Submarine

Dissolving Substances

Water Travels Up

Traveling Colors

Separating Black

Capillary Tube Activity

This was the first kit were we actually completed all the experiments, however, a few of them were flops! The kit provided strips of chromatography paper for a couple experiments, but we did not have success with Traveling Colors, Water Travels Up, or Separating Black experiments. Perhaps we did not wait long enough... Oh well... We tried!

We've done the classic Sink or Float experiment in the past, and it proved to be just as fun doing it yet again! The experiment showed us that metal sinks, while wood and plastic float.

Another fun activity was making a submarine. In our Sink or Float experiment, we learned that metal sinks... However, a submarine is made of metal, yet it is able to float at times... How can this be? Using a water bottle as our submarine and a test tube, we learned that a submarine can float when special tanks inside are filled with air! The air makes the submarine lighter and it rises to the surface.

Our favorite experiment in this kit dealt with dissolving substances in water. We conducted four different experiments by adding sand, salt, food coloring, and oil to a test tube of water. Half of the tube was water and then we added one substance at a time, shook up the tube, and watched what happened....

......

And it turns out that oil and sand do not dissolve in water....

Many of these activities you can do at home without the kit, however, I have enjoyed that it is all set up for me! And my son loves getting mail!

We actually just received another Kit, so stayed tuned for another Magic School Bus post in the future!!

I'd love for you to follow along so you never miss out on one of our fun activities we share at School Time Snippets!