Science Sunday - Balancing

For Science Sunday, this afternoon, the younger children (ages 4-8), and I followed up on what the older girls learned with their mobile projects, with some simple balancing experiments.

First, I gave them each a jumbo Popsicle stick, to see if they could balance them across a finger.

We talked, briefly, about the center of gravity, and then I gave them some small plastic cubes (pennies, nuts, or washers would work equally well), to balance on top of the sticks.


A job, that was complicated slightly by the fact, that D was in a teasing mood.


Finally, after they had worked on stacking, and balancing the cubes on the sticks, balanced across their fingers...


...and across the back of their chairs...


...we watched a short clip on balancing, and scales, on Brain Pop Jr (the only subscription site, we do subscribe to). Then, we decided, since the day was sunny, and almost warm, we'd take our investigation to the park. Where we discovered...



...it takes all three younger children to balance with T...


...and that force can be used to temporarily overcome mass.


We also discovered the reason it's important to warn the person on the other side of the teeter totter you're going to get off, and then switched over entirely to an investigation of static electricity, and bodies in motion.

In other words, we played, and generally had a fun few hours in the sun.

Click over to the Science Sunday link-up at Adventures in Mommydom, for more science projects, and ideas for children.

It's great to be a homeschooler.