Hands-On Physical Science Activities For Grades K-6, 2nd Edition

About the Author.

About the Library.

How to Use This Book.

Key to Icons.

Correlation with National Standards Grid.

Listing of Activities by Topic.

Section One: The Nature of Matter.

To the Teacher.

Activity 1.1: How Can You Make a Balance from Two Clothes Hangers?

Activity 1.2: How Can You Make a More Precise Balance from a Ruler?

Activity 1.3: What Is the Shape of a Drop of Water?

Activity 1.4: How Dry Can You Wring a Wet Sponge?

Activity 1.5: What Is Condensation?

Activity 1.6: What Are Mixtures and Solutions?

Activity 1.7: How Can You Separate a Mixture of Salt and Pepper?

Activity 1.8: What Happens to Water When You Add Salt?

Activity 1.9: How Does a Hydrometer Work?

Activity 1.10: How Can the Depth of a Bathyscaph Be Controlled?

Activity 1.11: What Are Solids, Liquids, and Gases?

Activity 1.12: How Can You Produce a Gas from a Solid and a Liquid?

Activity 1.13: How Can You Make a Fire Extinguisher?

Activity 1.14: How Can a Blown-Out Candle Relight Itself?

Activity 1.15: How Can You Remove the Flame from a Candle Without Putting It Out?

Activity 1.16: How Can You Make a Ball Bounce by Itself?

Activity 1.17: What Is Polyethylene?

Activity 1.18: Is the Dissolving of Solids a Physical Change or a Chemical Change?

Activity 1.19: Is Burned Sugar Still Sugar?

Activity 1.20: What Is Rust?

Activity 1.21: How Can Chemical Changes Help You Write a Secret Message?

Activity 1.22: How Does Temperature Affect the Speed of Molecules?

Activity 1.23: How Does Temperature Affect Solubility?

Activity 1.24: How Can You Make Large Sugar Crystals from Tiny Ones?

Activity 1.25: What Does Litmus Paper Tell Us About Substances?

Activity 1.26: How Can Perfume Get into a Sealed Balloon?

Activity 1.27: How Can You Cause Molecules to Move Through Solids?

Activity 1.28: What Is Viscosity?

Nature of Matter Word Searches.

Do You Recall?

Section Two: Energy.

To the Teacher

Activity 2.1: In What Ways Is Energy Used in Our Neighborhood?

Activity 2.2: How Well Do You Conserve Energy at Home?

Activity 2.3: How Do Potential Energy and Kinetic Energy Compare?

Activity 2.4: How Is Work Measured?

Activity 2.5: How Can Wind Energy Be Used to Turn Something?

Activity 2.6: How Can the Energy of Sound Cause Something to Move?

Activity 2.7: How Can Magnetism Do Work?

Activity 2.8: How Much Energy Is Stored in a Bow?

Activity 2.9: How Can You Power a Racer with a Rubber Band?

Activity 2.10: How Does a Nail Change as It Is Driven into a Board?

Activity 2.11: How Do Molecules Behave When Heated?

Activity 2.12: What Happens to Solids as They Are Heated and Cooled?

Activity 2.13: What Happens to Liquids as They Are Heated and Cooled?

Activity 2.14: What Happens to Gases as They Are Heated and Cooled?

Activity 2.15: What Other Type of Energy Accompanies Light from the Sun?

Activity 2.16: How Can You Get the Most Heat Energy from the Sun?

Activity 2.17: How Does Color Affect Energy Absorbed from Light?

Activity 2.18: Where Does Our Energy Really Come From?

Activity 2.19: How Can You Cook an Apple in Your Own Solar Cooker?

Activity 2.20: How Does Gravity Affect Heavy and Light Objects?

Activity 2.21: What Is Center of Gravity?

Activity 2.22: Where Is Your Center of Gravity?

Activity 2.23: How Can You Balance Several Nails on One Nail?

Activity 2.24: What Happens When You Burn a Candle at Both Ends?

Activity 2.25: How Does Inertia Affect the Way Things Move?

Activity 2.26: What Is Centrifugal Force?

Energy Word Searches.

Do You Recall?

Section Three: Light.

To the Teacher.

Activity 3.1: What Can You Make with a Shadow?

Activity 3.2: Why Does Your Shadow Change in Size and Shape?

Activity 3.3: What Path Does Light Follow?

Activity 3.4: How Does Light Energy Travel?

Activity 3.5: What Makes Things Transparent, Translucent, or Opaque?

Activity 3.6: What Is the Difference Between Reflected Light and Source Light?

Activity 3.7: What Is Unique About Reflected Light?

Activity 3.8: How Is Light Reflection Like the Bounce of a Ball?

Activity 3.9: How Many Images Can You See?

Activity 3.10: How Well Can You Control the Reflection of Light?

Activity 3.11: How Does a Periscope Work?

Activity 3.12: How Can You Pour Light?

Activity 3.13: What Color Is White?

Activity 3.14: How Can You Spin Different Colors?

Activity 3.15: What Do Color Filters Do to Colors?

Activity 3.16: How Do Detectives Use Color to Solve Crimes?

Activity 3.17: What Must You Remember When Spearing a Fish?

Activity 3.18: What Happened to the Pencil?

Activity 3.19: Can You Find the Coin?

Activity 3.20: How Can a Postage Stamp Hide Under Clear Glass?

Activity 3.21: What Makes Light Bend?

Activity 3.22: How Can You Make a Glass Disappear?

Activity 3.23: How Does a Camera See the World?

Activity 3.24: How Does a Lens Affect the Way Light Travels?

Activity 3.25: How Can You Make a Lens from a Drop of Water?

Activity 3.26: How Are Convex and Concave Lenses Different?

Activity 3.27: How Can You Measure the Magnifying Power of a Lens?

Activity 3.28: What Does a Prism Do to Light?

Activity 3.29: How Can You Make a Prism with Water?

Light Word Searches.

Do You Recall?

Section Four: Sound.

To the Teacher.

Activity 4.1: How Are Sounds Produced?

Activity 4.2: What Sounds Can You Identify?

Activity 4.3: How Well Can You Match Sounds?

Activity 4.4: How Can You Make Music with Fish Line?

Activity 4.5: How Much Noise Can You Make with a Paper Cup?

Activity 4.6: How Can You Make Bottled Music?

Activity 4.7: How Can You Make Music with Tubes?

Activity 4.8: How Can You Make a Kazoo with a Comb?

Activity 4.9: What Is a Triple-T Kazoo?

Activity 4.10: How Can You See Sound?

Activity 4.11: What Can Water Teach Us About Sound?

Activity 4.12: How Many Ways Can You Make a Telephone?

Activity 4.13: How Well Does Sound Travel Through Wood?

Activity 4.14: From How Far Away Can You Hear a Clock Tick?

Activity 4.15: How Can You Make a Coat Hanger Sing?

Activity 4.16: How Fast Does Sound Travel?

Activity 4.17: What Is a Tuning Fork?

Activity 4.18: How Can You Make a Goblet Sing?

Activity 4.19: How Can You Play a Phonograph Record with a Sewing Needle?

Activity 4.20: How Can Sound Be Directed?

Activity 4.21: How Can Sound Be Collected?

Activity 4.22: What Are Sympathetic Vibrations?

Activity 4.23: What Are Forced Vibrations?

Activity 4.24: What Is the Doppler Effect?

Activity 4.25: What Is a Sonic Boom?

Activity 4.26: Can You Invent or Make a Musical Instrument?

Sound Word Searches.

Do You Recall?

Section Five: Simple Machines.

To the Teacher.

Activity 5.1: What Happens When You Rub Your Hands Together?

Activity 5.2: How Do Lubricants Affect Friction?

Activity 5.3: How Do Starting Friction and Sliding Friction Compare?

Activity 5.4: How Does Rolling Friction Compare with Sliding Friction?

Activity 5.5: What Is the Advantage of a First-Class Lever?

Activity 5.6: What Type of Simple Machine Is the Teeter-Totter?

Activity 5.7: How Can a Lever Be Used to Lift Heavy Things?

Activity 5.8: How Can You Predict the Effort Required to Lift a Load with a First-Class Lever?

Activity 5.9: What Do We Lose as We Gain Force with a Lever?

Activity 5.10: How Is a Second-Class Lever Different from a First-Class Lever?

Activity 5.11: What Do You Gain and What Do You Lose by Using a Second-Class Lever?

Activity 5.12: What Is a Third-Class Lever?

Activity 5.13: What Is Gained and What Is Lost by Using a Third-Class Lever?

Activity 5.14: What Is the Wheel and Axle?

Activity 5.15: What Type of Simple Machine Is the Pencil Sharpener?

Activity 5.16: What Is a Fixed Pulley?

Activity 5.17: What Is a Movable Pulley?

Activity 5.18: What Happens When a Small Person Tugs on a Large Person?

Activity 5.19: What Can Be Gained by Combining Fixed and Movable Pulleys?

Activity 5.20: What Is an Inclined Plane?

Activity 5.21: What Is a Wedge?

Activity 5.22: What Is a Screw?

Activity 5.23: What Kind of Simple Machine Is the Screwdriver?

Activity 5.24: What Kind of Simple Machine Is This?

Simple Machines Word Searches.

Do You Recall?

Section Six: Magnetism.

To the Teacher.

Activity 6.1: Which Rock Is Different?

Activity 6.2: What Do Magnets Look Like?

Activity 6.3: How Do Magnets Get Their Names?

Activity 6.4: Where Did the First Metal Magnet Come From?

Activity 6.5: What Materials Will a Magnet Pick Up?

Activity 6.6: Through What Substances Can Magnetism Pass?

Activity 6.7: Which Magnet Is Strongest?

Activity 6.8: What Part of a Magnet Has the Strongest Pull?

Activity 6.9: What Is a Special Property of Magnetism?

Activity 6.10: What Happens When a Magnet Can Turn Freely?

Activity 6.11: What Is a Compass?

Activity 6.12: How Can You Make a Compass?

Activity 6.13: What Are the Earth’s Magnetic Poles?

Activity 6.14: How Do Materials Become Magnetized?

Activity 6.15: How Can You Find the Poles of a Lodestone?

Activity 6.16: How Can You See a Magnetic Field?

Activity 6.17: How Can You Preserve a Magnetic Field?

Magnetism Word Searches

Do You Recall?

Section Seven: Static Electricity.

To the Teacher.

Activity 7.1: What Is the Kissing Balloon?

Activity 7.2: How Does Rubbing with Wool Affect Plastic Strips?

Activity 7.3: What Changes the Way Balloons React to Each Other?

Activity 7.4: What Will a Comb Do to Styrofoam?

Activity 7.5: How Can You Make Paper Dance Under Glass?

Activity 7.6: Why Does Paper Leap for a Balloon?

Activity 7.7: What Does Puffed Rice Run Away From?

Activity 7.8: How Can You Make Salt and Pepper Dance Together?

Activity 7.9: How Can You Make a String Dance?

Activity 7.10: How Can You Fill a Stocking Without Putting a Leg into It?

Activity 7.11: How Can You Bend Water?

Activity 7.12: How Can You Make a Spark with Your Finger?

Activity 7.13: How Can You Make an Electroscope?

Static Electricity Word Searches.

Do You Recall?

Section Eight: Current Electricity.

To the Teacher.

Activity 8.1: What Materials Will Conduct Electricity?

Activity 8.2: What Is a Circuit?

Activity 8.3: How Can We Model a Complete Circuit?

Activity 8.4: What Is a Short Circuit?

Activity 8.5: How Can You Make a Switch?

Activity 8.6: How Can You Make a Series Circuit?

Activity 8.7: How Can You Make a Parallel Circuit?

Activity 8.8: What Is Resistance?

Activity 8.9: How Does Electric Current Affect a Compass?

Activity 8.10: What Happens When Electric Current Flows

Through a Wire?

Activity 8.11: What Is an Electromagnet?

Activity 8.12: What Is a Way to Change the Strength of an Electromagnet?

Activity 8.13: What Is Another Way to Change the Strength of an Electromagnet?

Activity 8.14: What Happens When Current Flowing Through a Wire Changes Direction?

Activity 8.15: How Does the Direction of the Flow of Current Affect an Electromagnet?

Activity 8.16: How Can You Tell Whether Electric Current Is Flowing Through a Wire?

Activity 8.17: How Is Electricity Produced by Chemicals?

Activity 8.18: How Does a Lantern Battery or Flashlight Battery Work?

Activity 8.19: How Can Electricity Be Produced by a Lemon?

Activity 8.20: How Can Mechanical Energy Produce Electricity?

Activity 8.21: How Can Sunlight Produce Electricity?

Activity 8.22: How Can Electricity Help Us Communicate?

Current Electricity Word Searches.

Do You Recall?