Toddler Science Activity: What Floats?

We spent a couple of hours in our backyard this morning. It cooled off after the rain, and Santino didn't want to play in his kiddie pool, but asked me to fill it up so that he could wash his diggers and play with the boat I made for him a few days ago.

 

I didn't blog about the boat making activity, as it was more of a disaster than anything. Santino can't make boats yet, and I can't either, as I discovered. Long story short, there was one boat left standing, or floating, and he found it today and wanted to play with it again.

That gave me an idea to encourage an experiment: throw random objects/toys in the pool to see if whether it is going to float. Santino loved this activity! He readily walked around, collecting balls, cars, gravel, sticks. He then would trow them into the pool, observing what is going to happen: sink or float?

 

I encouraged him and gave a few ideas, guided to what else to throw, and experiment with the "ferries" (flat plastic containers) and see how many toy cars they can hold.

We discovered, that no matter how many times we tried, the "boat" wasn't really sail-able; as soon as we put anything next to the mast, the balance was lost and the boat flipped.

Santino was really engaged in this activity. He loves playing with water both inside and outside, and this one was a fresh variety of his regular play.