Hummingbird Educational Resources

DISCOVER MATTER BOTTLE
I use this poem. Each lab pair has a small empty water bottle. We talk about solids and they put a marble (a solid) in the bottle. We talk about liquids and they 1/2 fill their bottle with water (we add a drop of food color). We talk about gases and we add 5 drops of dish soap (this forms bubbles that have gas--oxygen- -in them).There you have it! A water bottle with all the states ofmatter as a visual!

States of Matter

Solids
A solid's a solid.
It doesn't change shape.
It can't move around;
It stays in one place.
Your desk is a solid
And so is your chair.
Just look in your classroom
Wow! They're everywhere!

Gases
Air is a gas.
We can't see it, that's true;
But often we feel it
In things that we do.
It keeps up a kite.
Air fills up a bubble.
Without it to breathe,
We would be in BIG trouble.

Liquids
A liquid moves smoothly.
We say that it flows
From one place to another
How quickly it goes!
We know that most liquids
Are easy to see.
With no shape of their own,
They're not like you or me.

TOOTHPASTE FREEZE
Submitted by Nancy
Ziplock bag
 cube of ice
 one squeeze of tooth paste (Blue tooth paste does best)
               
 Place the ingredients in the ziplock bag, make sure you get most of the air out of the bag and make sure the zip lock is good and sealed.  
 For the children that likes to put things in their mouth place this bag inside of another bag.  
 Let the Children squeeze and shake as long as they like.  
 Language is developed by talking about the feel, color, what is taking place as they squeeze the bag. 
 To add to this bag you can also use liquid soap for more bubbles.

SNOW
Dehydrated mashed potato flakes work great in the sand table for snow.  Add water and you can actually make snowballs.  Safe to eat
too!

GAK IN FUNNELS
Another thing we have done recently-  I string funnels up from the ceiling and put a little gak in there.  As it begins to ooze, it comes down onto  the tables in strings.  It is VERY fun to watch and if you do several funnels, it is interesting to see what different patterns it makes as it piles up on the table below.

CORNSTARCH AND WATER
In this activity it's best to let the children discover what you're doing step by step, not to tell the whole story ahead of time.

Let children handle thedry cornstarch.  Listen to their language — squeaky, silky, soft, scratchy,gritty.  Now add a little water and let them mix and feel it again.  After this lumpy stage you can add a little more water until it's all moist.  It forms an unstable material, which makes people smile and giggle at itsunexpected behavior.  It breaks, but it also melts.  If you pick up a chunkcan you hold it?  Give a child a lump of the material.  What happens to your gift? Some people find it vaguely scary, other people find it freeing.Children are interested in it because it's funny stuff.  It doesn't behave like glue or like milk or like wood; it's a liquid and it's a solid. Working with it develops the hand and stimulates language.  After playing with it your hands feel nice and soft.

If you rest your fingers lightly on the surface of the cornstarch-water mix, it will let your fingers drift down to the bottom of the container.  If you try to punch your way to the bottom it will resist you, like some other encounters in "real life."

Your pacing during the introduction of cornstarch really matters.  Once a child wanted to leave while the stuff was still lumpy and I told her no, because I didn't want her to miss just how much fun it can be.  I hurried to add enough water to make it nice.  As soon as it was goopy  and she had tried it, I gave her permission to leave.  By then, of course, she didn't want to leave.

I saw my responsibility as making sure that she had the experience.  I would have overstepped what I think of respectful teaching had I held her at the activity, after it was in place.  I can lead her to water, but she herself must judge her thirst.

Cornstarch works well in a baby bathtub set on a table, with a limit of two or three children using the whole pound.  If you leave it in it's tub overnight,by morning it's dry.  Now add some water and it becomes the wonderful stuff again.  Be sure to invite the children to watch this event.

It's a clean sort of messy play.  The white, powdery mess on the floor can be picked up with a dustpan and brush, or a vacuum cleaner, or you can rub it into the rug.  Hanging around with little children you're always going to have cornstarch or something on your trousers.

You can add food coloring to your cornstarch, but you might not want to.  I don't, since my feeling is that to change its color is a side trip, adigression.  This stuff is about texture and feel, not color.  The childrencome back to it again and again because it feels good and behaves inaninteresting way

SENSORY TABLE IDEAS
Submitted by Heather
Worms in the sensory table.
We put live earthworms in the sensory table along with some potting soil.  We keep them in the table for 5 days.  Afterwards, we set them free outside.  Make sure the soil is damp.  The kids absolutely loved holding and playing with the worms!
Feeder Goldfish
We put feeder goldfish in our sensory water with cold, clean water.  We only leave them in the table for one day.  An adult needs to supervise to make sure the fish are not taken out of the water.  The kids love holding them!

SENSORY TABLE
Submitted by Catherine
I've put to name just a few....
colored water
rice
grits/coffee
easter grass w/plastic bugs or animals
cedar shavings/animals
cornmeal/with plastic snakes and ants
scraps of constuction paper for tearing
 soap mix for bubbles or bathing dolls
 colored popcorn kernels and animals
popped popcorn with bags and scoops
cooked spaghetti with a touch of oil (some red and some blue)
potting soil and flower pots
add hay straw to your water table for an experiment in texture changes.
Un popped pop corn around Thanksgiving
Bows (For presents)
Flour (Just a light coating) and matchbox type cars to make roads.
Pieces of Wrapping paper and kid safe scissors
Sand , Fake flowers and a small child size watering can.
Feathers
Cotton
Scrap fabric
leaves and acorns
rocks
rice
sand
little bit of water and plastic frogs
I have small plastic astronaut I got from the toy store I put them in with a
little sand.
Plastic jewels and sand
Pumpkin seeds (clean and dry.)
Bags filed and sealed with apple sauce.
Packing Peanuts
Old lack hook yarn
Macaroni

SENSORY TRAIL
Submitted by Carolyn
Have you tried putting bird seed, rice, small smooth stones, oatmeal etc. into separate pans (jelly roll pans large enough for feet to fit in or similar low edged plastic pans).  Line them up one after the other...have the children take off their shoes and walk through the different pans.  The texture is great!  It's subtle but they can tell the difference.  I love to do this myself..the birdseed is especially relaxing for my feet(don't use the kind with sunflower seeds, just the regular bird seed).  If this activity doesn't work well for you all these things can be used for collage and the seed can be used for bird feeding. The children at my center love this...so do the adults.

DISCOVERY BOTTLES Note: Please be sure ALL bottle tops are secured with hot glue and/or duct tape.

COLOR MIXING BOTTLES
Submitted by Trish
Combine colored lamp oil with colored water.  These mix well and separate fast.

TREASURE HUNT JAR
1 clean plastic jar with lid
(such as a peanut butter jar)
Finch bird seed
Fill the jar half full of bird seed. Add whatever small items you can find, such as a screw, jingle bell, rubber band, piece of macaroni, button, needle, bead, screw, paper clip, penny, marble, pop tab, etc. Put 20 items in the jar. Fill with bird seed, leaving a space at the top for the seed to move around. To prevent people from opening the lid, you can add some glue to the threads of the lid, then screw it onto the jar. Keep a list of the items you put into the jar because it's almost guaranteed that the person you give it to will not find them all!
Add the following poem:
Some pirates got it all mixed up
And did things wrong way 'round.
They put the treasure in a bottle
And buried the map in the ground!
Their treasure was some silly stuff
Like needles, screws and beads.
Then dear old Polly Parrot
Added all her extra seeds!
So find the twenty items here
No two are quite the same.
Don't open up the bottle though
As that would break the game!

ALPHABET BOTTLE
Fill a small plastic bottle with corn syrup, colorful letter confetti and some marbles.  I use duct tape to make sure the cap stays on.  The marbles add interest and break apart the letters if they clump together.  We keep this one at our writing table.

COLOR OF THE MONTH
I visited the hair care aisle at Wal-mart.  I had no idea the variety of colors and scents that were available for so CHEAP!  I have a color of the month area in my room and now we use a variety of shampoos and hair gels to fill the bottles.

WATER BOTTLES VS GEL
We made sets of bottles filled with different things like dried beans, curling ribbon, glitter and tissue paper.
In one bottle from each set we added water in addition to the beans ribbon, glitter and tissue paper.  We observed what happened inside each bottle and recorded our observations over a few days time.  The most fun were the bean
bottles and the tissue paper bottles.  As the natural gases formed in the wet beans the bottle started to hiss at us.  Just for really gross fun we opened the wet bean bottle and smelled it!  It smelled awful but the kids had a great time smelling it and saying yuuuck over and over again!
Try water with seashells or water with marbles

MAGNET BOTTLES
1) Rice with metal objects that will be attracted by a magnet.  The kids use a magnetic wand to uncover all the hidden objects.  (Be sure to leave room for the rice to move around or the objects will be unable to come to the surface)

2) Fine metal shavings. The students use the magnetic wand with it also.

3) Fill the bottle half full with sand or salt.  Add pins, paper clips, and small metallic objects to the sand and shake.  Let the children put a small magnet on the side of the bottle and try to find hidden objects by slowly dragging the magnet.

SAND
Sand with seashells and small sea things

OCEAN WAVE
1/4 bottle of colored water (mix this part first), add mineral oil until the bottle is 2/3 full.  Gently rock the bottle back and
forth and watch the wave.

MUDDY BOTTLE
Put 1/2 cup dirt in the bottom of a bottle, and fill it with water.  Let the children shake it up and watch the dirt settle.  (Try using gravel, peat moss, clay, and different types of soil.)
Collect soil samples from different states or countries and make muddy bottle from them.  Label the bottles so the children can compare the soil found in different areas.

BUBBLE BOTTLE
Add 1 cup of water, a squirt of dish detergent, and 2 drops of food coloring to the bottle.  Shake to make bubbles.

SOUND BOTTLE
Put beans, popcorn kernels, and rice in different bottles.  Stick each bottle inside an old sock.  Let the children shake and guess what is in the bottles.

ESTIMATE BOTTLE
Put nuts, pebbles, small shells, dried beans, or other small objects in a bottle.  After the children guess how many are inside, dump out the contents and count them together.  (Send this bottle home and let the children take turns filling it with objects.)

DENSITY BOTTLE
Take three bottles.  Fill one with water, one with vegetable oil, and one with clear shampoo.  Add a marble to each bottle, then screw on the lids.  The children can observe how the marbles move through different liquids.

STRESS BOTTLE
Pour 1/3 cup clear corn syrup in a bottle.  Add glitter, sequins, or small toys.  The children can hold the bottle and slowly turn it around.  This will help them focus and relax.

SEASONAL BOTTLE
Put autumn leaves, flowers, nuts, or other natural objects in bottles of water.  The children can observe the objects as they disintegrate.

HIDDEN OBJECTS
Fill a bottle 2/3 full with sand or salt. Add five to ten small objects to the bottle and shake it.  Challenge the children to find all
of the hidden objects.

SERIATION BOTTLES
Take four or five bottles and add different amounts of water in each one, from empty to full.  Mix the bottles up, then let the children seriate them from empty to full.

PICTURE BOTTLES
Put the small (1 inch size) pictures of your class that you usually get from
the school photographer in a bottle.  Let the children shake the bottle to
find their own picture or to find others' pictures and name the students in
the class.

DICE BOTTLE
Drop dice into the bottle; do not fill the bottle with water.
Children shake the bottle, and choose from any of these activities name the
number on the dice, count out that many objects, name the number that comes
before or after, write the number, predict what number will come next.

CLAY BOTTLE
Add clay (the clay from the yard, not play-dough)
Fill with water, and observe what happens when you shake the bottle and the
clay reacts with the water.

POTPOURRI BOTTLE
Cut a small hole into the side of the bottle; attach
netting with clear plastic tape, over the hole. Fill the bottle with
potpourri in flavors such as orange, vanilla, pine, gingerbread, roses, etc.
Children describe the scent, or what the scent reminds them of.

RUST BOTTLE
Add screws bolts or nails to an empty bottle. Fill the bottle
with water. Observe what happens, or track how many days the rust developed.

GLOW IN THE DARK BOTTLE
Add small glow in the dark items such as stars to
a bottle. Do not add any water. Children can put the bottle under a box, and
look through a hole to observe what happens when the bottle is placed in the
dark. Or they can take the bottle to a darkened room, or under a table
covered with a sheet.