Water Level Experiment Inspired by Literature!

Learn with Literature!

Water level experiment inspired by literature!

Batman loves to read stories from Panchatantra. 
Panchatantra is essentially a collection of animal fables, that are generally accompanied with a moral and philosophical teaching, compiled together by a very learned scholar, Pandit Vishnu Sharma, more than 2,000 years ago! They have passed the test of time with flying rainbow colors :)

It is one of the most frequently translated literary products of India and these stories are supposedly amongst the most widely known in the world. Originally written to impart wisdom to some "dud" sons of a king around 200 B.C., they are still traveling around the world, enlightening and enchanting readers, young and old! 

At least, that is certainly the case in my house! Batman and Spiderman both love the stories. Some of them are a bit violent for younger kids, and I generally skip over them. Some I modify a bit. But the stories still have the power to enthrall my boys.

Here is the story in short which inspired our water level experiment, and a whole water unit (in a separate post).

Thirsty Crow

Once upon a time, a very thirsty crow was flying in search of water. After a long search, all he could find was a tiny bit of water inside an earthen pot/pitcher. But the water level was too low. The poor crow could not reach the water with his beak. Nor could he tip over the pitcher, which was too heavy. The crow, about to give up in despair, noticed some pebbles lying around the pitcher. He decided to drop the pebbles, one at a time, until the water level had risen high enough for him to reach with his beak! Hurray for the crow. The story teaches us several things - where there is a will, there is way; necessity  is the mother of invention.

Water Level Experiment

Now that we have all the context, onwards with the experiment. Batman had read this story a while back, so it was not fresh in his mind, on purpose. To set up the experiment, we had a cup of water (a pitcher or a vase with a narrow opening is better to imitate the story!) with color of choice, and some pebbles, big and small and a kitchen scale.
At first, I presented Batman with just the cup of water, and asked him if he could think of  a way we could make the water level rise for the thirsty crow. He immediately said pebbles. 
Out came the pebbles, along with kitchen scale. And my little scientist got his "notebook" for recording stuff, and a marker to mark the water level, on his own, I might add!

 Then we got to work. Batman marked the existing level of water with a marker as "1". We measured the big pebbles first. Batman noted the number, and I explained that the weight is between 4 and 5 ounces, or unit. Then we dropped the pebbles in the cup, the water rose, and we marked it with "2". 


 
Then we measured the the small pebbles, we kept on putting pebbles on the scale till we got to 4.5 oz again.
Hypothesis - if we take the big pebbles out, where will the water level be? If we put the small pebbles we measured, where will the water level be? 
Batman was spot on. He told me that the water level came up to 2 in both cases because the big pebbles and the small pebbles both showed the same "number" on the scale. The crow must have chosen a few big pebbles rather than a lot of small pebbles, because he was a smart crow!!

Level 2 - with either the small or the big pebbles, and Level 3 - with both big and small pebbles. We guesstimated that the distance between 1 and 2, and 2 and 3 is about the same!! 

 




We digressed into other fun stuff with water after that, but that will keep for another post at another time!!

If you are interested, you can find some stories from Panchatantra online for free here. These translations are a bit pedestrian, lacking the richness of the prose and the poetry.

I also found some on Amazon.  I did not see the book that I own on Amazon, but the ones there looked good.


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Frog Sensory Bin and Pond Unit

Metamorphosis and more!

 



Spiderman read "The Teeny Weeny Tadpole" by Sheridan Cain at school.

The teeny weeny tadpole is well, teeny weeny, and a tadpole to boot, and cannot jump among the lily pads like Mother Frog, he can only splish and splash.  His mom, and all the other animals he meets on his journey downstream (lamb, rabbit and grasshopper) assure him that he will be able to jump just like them - soon. After several days, he meets up with big bad fish, who eats tadpoles! And the only way to escape the big bad fish is to jump. And the teeny weeny tadpole, who has now become a frog, jumps and escapes from fish! This is the story in a nutshell. It's a fun book.

Now back to Spiderman, who, just like the teeny weeny tadpole, has been going around asking everyone - Can you jump? And, he is naming everything teeny weeny tadpole! So I thought this would be the ideal time to introduce to him the transition of tadpole to frog, and refresh Batman's memory about Metamorphosis!!

I set this frog/pond sensory bin up as a surprise for the two kiddos.
There are some blue/green pebbles, blue/dark blue water beads, twigs, some tiny weeds pulled from the garden that looked like they could be found in a pond (minus all the root soil), plastic fish, frogs, and turtles, lily pads cut from foam, and of course, the life cycle models of the frog!! The set does not have eggs, but we have the young tadpole, mature tadpole, tadpole with legs, froglet, and the frog.
You can find frog life cycle figures (I don't remember where I got mine from, mine does not have the eggs), and the Safari frogs and turtle toob.

This is what the kiddos found when they came home from school!




Gratifyingly, they loved the surprise! Frogs, water, water beads, nets to catch the tadpole in - apparently, that's all it takes to make them happy! Spiderman "caught" a fish, and put it in a bowl aquarium! Spiderman was not too sure about the "plants", but Batman showed him how the plants/logs were needed for the animals to hide in. Otherwise, they would get eaten up too easily. He even explained that this was called "camouflage"!!

Batman's comments when he saw the whole set up and presentation as shown above - "the tadpoles should not be "on" the lily pads. Can they breathe if they are out of water for too long? I know the frogs can!" Just that one comment was worth all that work. That he observed, processed it, and pointed it out to me. 
He is right. Initially, a tadpoles breathes and moves just like a fish, using its gills and tail. After about 5 weeks, the tadpole develops lungs, and has to swim to the surface to gulp water!!

I had five frogs, so we also sang the five little speckled frogs, sitting on a log song, and created some satisfactory splashes :)
Umm, we had to balance the frogs on the log outside the water. Next time, we will try with a bigger log. Check our collage picture.

I always try to make a mini unit to go along with the sensory bin if possible. Counting, sorting, patterns, stacking, pouring and making a mess comes naturally. But the frog sensory bin lends itself very nicely to a lot of different learning adventures, especially a pond or frog unit!

These are the concepts that I am going to introduce to the boys after their excitement over the bin dies down a bit!

• I don't have the book, but I found a reading of the book, the Teeny Weeny Tadpole.
• Read the books, as soon as I figure out where two of them are hiding!
  From Tadpole to Frog - the book not only takes us through the metamorphosis of the bull frog, but also takes about frogs hibernating, and shows a variety of animals and plant life through the different seasons.
  The Wide Mouthed Frog - a fun pop up book about a curious, and bragging wide-mouthed frog! By the end of the book, the mouth is not so wide...
  Fish is Fish - a delightful story of friendship between a minnow and a tadpole!
  Curious George Tadpole Trouble - the kids have seen this episode, and love reading the book. George, who is charge of Bill's tadpoles, lets them out in the pond for a swim, but do the tadpoles come back?
  
  
• Introduce the concept of Amphibian - which a frog is. 
• Some other characteristics - like webbed feet. What other animals has webbed feet? Why? What other animals do you know who can live in both land and water? How about their super special moist skin? Or their tongue?
• Talk about Metamorphosis - through frog's life cycle and butterfly's!
• Observe our pond life habitat, and learn more about it.
• Counting backwards with Spiderman with the five speckled frog song!!
• Beginning sound, ending sound, rhyming reviews with words like frog, log, fish, turtle, duck, water, pond etc...
• I have to prepare this, but it might be fun to have plastic eggs with the beginning sounds, and get the kiddos to match the eggs to the animals, like d for duck and dragonfly, f for fish and frog, t for turtle, s for snail, salamander, snakes etc. These all hatch from eggs, and all can be found at a pond habitat.
• Go through the frog nomenclature card/booklets at +Montessori Print Shop at the free printable downloads section!
• Supplement with the frog/pond themed printables for more language and math fun!

You can find some wonderful resources at Frog life cycle newsletter, along with lots of free printables from generous bloggers. Hop on to my Pinterest board, Pond Unit Fun n Learn, which lists all these resources and more!

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