Water water everywhere, water all around

We learned that a liquid will fill and take the shape of whatever container it is put in.

We experimented with sinking and floating.

Things that were dense, heavier than water, sank.

Things that were buoyant, lighter than water, floated.

We experimented with an apple and an orange.

With the peel on the orange floated. The air in the peel made it buoyant.

We peeled the orange

and discovered that a peeled orange will sink!

Without the peel it is dense.

We did the same experiment with an apple, peel on and peeled. We discovered that apples will float both ways.

Morah Katie: Why did the orange float with the peel on, it felt heavy.

Kian: It was buoyant.

Morah Katie: Oh, remind me what that means?

Kian: It's light and floats.

Levi: Buoyant means it is lighter that water, it has air to lift it.

Morah Katie: Are oranges buoyant fruit then?

Dena: With the peel.

Morah Katie: What about apples, are they buoyant fruit?

Tori: YES! They float!

We put a sponge in water and saw it fill with water.

We watched it all day to see if would sink. Even though it was heavier wet than dry, it was still lighter than the water it displaced.

Morah Katie: When we have a cup of water, and we drop pebbles in the cup, what happens to the water?

Levi: It goes up.

Morah Katie: The pebbles displace, or move the water, it is as if they say to the water "make room for us!"the water moves. what will happen if we fill the cup of water with pebbles?

Daniel: It will go over.

We talked about how water erodes, slowly breaks apart or disintegrates, some solid things.

We put coco krispies in a small container of water in the morning and saw them become mushy, but still floating, by lunch.

We put a piece of paper in water. It first floated, but by lunch the water had permeated the paper, filled the tiny tiny air pockets, making it sink.

Now that we better understand the nature of water, when we begin talking about the "splitting of the sea" in our passover story, the great miracle will be better grasped by our minds.

U was our letter of the week.

We discovered that u, like a,e i and o - a very special group of letter friends called vowels, are very social letters. They rarely begin words, they prefer to be surrounded by their letter friends.

We will most often find them in the middle, like in hut, bug, cup,

We traded the middle sounds in these words and discovered we had created hot, big, cap. mut will turn into mat.

We are also learning about how our Seder meal will be different from our regular and our shabbat dinners.

We started with a beautifully set Shabbat table, and we replaced item by item until we had a Passover Seder table!

The Seder is all about provoking the children's curiosity by pointing out the strange differences, hence the famous "Ma Nishtana" questions.