States of Matter

Welcome back! Today I'm going to share a few highlights from my states of matter unit. 

 I used an activity from the blog Learning Ideas- Grades K-8 to introduce the 3 states of matter.  As you can see from the photograph below I put an example of a solid, liquid, and gas inside Ziplock bags.  

I started out the lesson by passing around the baggies that had a solid inside.  As the class  passed around the baggies we talked about what is a solid.  I asked them if  a solid takes up space, keeps its size, keeps its shape, have weight? Next, I asked if they could tell me an example of a solid.  I repeated the same process with liquids and gases.  

  

Day 2  We reviewed what a solid, liquid and gas is by filling out this anchor chart.  I found pictures of the examples of solids, liquids, and gases that they came up with the day before.  I put the class into small groups and gave each group a picture.  They had to decide if it was a solid, liquid, or gas.  Each group shared what state of matter their picture was, and glued it onto the chart.  

Day 3  I asked my class if they could help me solve a problem.  I told them I wanted to turn a liquid into a solid, but I wasn't sure how to do it.  In partners they came up with different ways to solve my problem.   I was amazed at the ideas they came up with- one set of partners thought that I could take orange juice and freeze it to make it solid!!  We decided that the easiest way would be to put water into a container and put it into the freezer.  

After the liquid turned into a solid I had them discuss with their partner about how could we turn the solid back into a liquid.  The class decided that they should take the containers out of the freezer and sit their containers on their desks so that the temperature of the room would melt the ice.  My class loved this simple experiment!

My class also learned about how water takes the shape of its container.  I got the idea for this experiment from the blog Under the Alphabet Tree.  I showed my class a bunch of different sized containers that I filled with colored water.  Each container had the same amount of water in it but the size fooled the eye.  I asked them which container they thought held the most water.  Most of the class thought that it was the tall vase that had the red water in it.  To find out if they were correct I used a container that I drew a line on to measure the water.  When we finished all the containers had the exact same amount of water! 

Miss H.