Magnets!

June 15-28th, 2013

I know it's stereotypical elementary school science, but magnets are still super cool! We had a lot of fun playing with magnets. 

First, I printed off a maze I found online and taped it to a piece of cardboard. Then I gave Seth a paperclip and a magnet and told him to get the 'car' (clip) through the maze. He was surprised to see that the magnet worked through the cardboard.

The clip goes through the maze

View from under the maze

Then (totally unprompted) Seth asked if magnets could work through other things like they did through the cardboard. So we experimented!

Works through the plastic!

How many paperclips can that magnet hold through the side of the tub? 

Grand total? Five paperclips!

We also tried seeing if the magnets worked through our skin (on our hands--the strongest ones did) and through our wooden table (none were strong enough).

Next experiment: can Seth get a paperclip out of a jar of water without getting wet? He was perplexed at first, but figured it out pretty quickly: 

Seth's own experiment: which of our magnets is the strongest? 

He was surprised that the biggest magnet wasn't the strongest--it was actually the smallest one!

We also pulled out the magnet board and followed some of the pattern cards. Seth can do it all by himself now!

We love this board, especially because it can be folded up for storage!

Another fun one--digging for magnetic items in the sandbox:

Probably would have been more fun had it not been almost 90 degrees and ridiculously humid that day.

By chance I happened to find a set of these magnets at the local Dollar Tree. I had very low expectations for them, but they're actually pretty strong! I've seen them called Singing Magnets, Buzzing Magnets, and Snake Eggs. They really do buzz and dance--it's pretty cool!

I couldn't get her to let go long enough to get a picture...

But of all the magnet activities, these balls and rods have been the clear and constant favorite. I can get almost an hour of quiet time out of these two if I pull these out! 

We have managed to lose (and find, and lose again) a few pieces--especially the balls, which are not magnetic--but it's still totally worth it! Definitely not for kids who are still prone to putting things in their mouths, though. 

We also read several books about magnets (most were above his level, but he gleaned some information). And now we have a lot of fun things to play with when we're bored!