Friday, January 27, 2012

Exploring the Properties of Magnets

One morning earlier this week I presented Jack with a glass filled with water and several paperclips. I told Jack that he could show Grace and Eve a very exciting trick of removing the paperclips from the glass without ever touching them. This lead into a great discussion all about magnets and how they work! Jack learned how magnets attract objects made with iron and that they have two poles, a north and a south pole. Through several experiments, Jack discovered that magnets can pull through gases, like air, but they can also pull through solids and liquids. Jack did many hands-on activities to explore magnetic fields and also to explore the properties of magnets.

After showing Jack how he could remove the paper clips from a glass of water without ever touching them, I filled a bin full of water (to further demonstrate how magnets can pull through liquid) and placed magnetic and non-magnetic items in it. Jack had a great time discovering which of the items were magnetic.

After lots of time to experiment and play, we removed the items from the water bin and Jack did a great job sorting the magnetic versus the non-magnetic objects...


Yay, Jack!!!!

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