Water Week - Update #5

Friday

Today was another low key day. We were getting ready for vacation, cleaning the house, doing laundry, and starting to pack. There was just one more activity I really wanted to try.

Water Xylophone

M has an app on my phone with a xylophone (she calls "duck piano," but the app is actually called "Kids Piano Lite"), so I thought she'd really enjoy a water xylophone to play with. We added a little extra to the activity by making number and alphabet shaped ice cubes with food coloring the night before. I got the silicone trays on clearance at Hobby Lobby a few months ago. We made all 4 trays, one blue, one red, one yellow, and one green.

After lining up 6 glasses, we started dropping the ice cubes into the glasses in rainbow order. As we took the letter ice cubes out of the trays we named the letter and made the letter sounds. 

 

We didn't have orange or purple ice cubes, so we talked about how we could mix colors to make those.

  

Now the hard part- wait for the ice cubes to melt. You could very easily add some warm water to each cup (or do this outside on a hot day), but we decided to let them sit and come back later. It was cool to see how much M is leaning- I told her we needed to wait for the ice to melt, and she said "so it will turn into water?"

When we came back later, we added more water to the glasses so the red glass had the least and the purple glass was full.

 I gave her a striker from her marching band set (a spoon would work just as well), and let her explore the different sounds. We talked about the difference between high notes and low notes and how they can be combined to make songs. I explained why the glasses made different sounds. (Adding more water increases the mass, which lowers the frequency of the sound wave, and we hear a lower note.)

M had a lot of fun with this, and I'm sure we'll do it again when she's older and can learn more about sound waves, pitch, frequency and amplitude. You can find more activities here --> Math, Science and Sound Activities

Water Fun with Friends

After lunch we went to a friend's house (who happened to be playing along with our water theme for the week!). They set up several tubs of water with toys to explore. There were 6 kids total, including some little crawlers and some older toddlers. There was something for everyone- boats, water guns, water beads, stones, magic capsules that dissolve and release foam animals...

I will definitely buy some of those water beads to use again. The clear beads disappear when you drop them in water, and you can feel around in the water to find them. They come in different colors too, which could be fun for sensory bins.

Overall, I'd call Water Week a big success! Next up- Vacation!