Columbus Day

On Columbus Day, one of the things we did was the Float/Sink experiment from Kim Adsit's Hooray for Columbus Day packet.  They worked with their tables to see what objects would float and which would sink.  We made predictions and then tested our predictions.  They loved it, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of it!

After we tested our objects, I gave each of them a piece of aluminum foil and had them build a boat that would float out of it.  I gave them no more direction than that.  I wanted to see their thinking and creativity.  Would they make it with a flat bottom?  Would it even look like a boat?  Would they make it flat or make sides on their boat?  

Here we are making our boats.  You can see the tub of water we floated objects in in the center.  

Also, there are all IPhone pics, so they aren't so great.

I allowed them to test their boats at their tables.  If their boat floated, we tested them with passengers (Teddy Bear Counters) to see how many each boat could hold.  Our big winner was Nate and his boat (below).  His boat held 16 passengers!

We absolutely loved this activity.  I even had a boy design a new boat at home and bring it in to me the next day :)