Ocean Activities

We're going to the California and staying near the ocean in a few weeks (when this is published we'll already be there!), so I checked out Awesome Ocean Science (Kids Can! series) for some ocean related activities the kids might find fun to do.

Although the book is written for kids a bit older than mine, we still found many activities simple enough to do and understand. One of our favorites was the condensation/evaporation experiment.  We put warm water in the bottom of a plastic jar and set a baggie of ice inside the rim of the jar, holding it in place with a rubber band. Then after a few minutes it was exciting to see our ice baggie start to "rain."

The kids work well together because Alexa loves to be the reader and basically tell us what to do!  Jared is definitely a hands-on person and prefers to be the one in charge of doing the experiment or activity.

They had some really cool experiments showing what happens when the fresh water of rivers flow into the salt water of the ocean. Afterwards, Jared had the most fun just playing with the food coloring, water and medicine dropper.

Alexa's favorite experiment was testing which materials absorbed and which didn't absorb water. We gathered stuff from all over the house:  gym shoes, wood, leather shoes, paper, sponges and lots of other things, too. Then we squeezed droplets of water of the material and watched what happened....

...and then finished off the rest of the water.

Another fun experiment was testing water pressure. You stick your hand in a bread bag and then plunge it into a container of water. The kids thought it was so cool that their hands would get squeezed by the water. It really made them understand what would happen to you twenty feet under the water if you weren't wearing special equipment.