Polar Bear Winter Science Experiments!
The past few weeks in kindergarten we have been learning all about arctic animals, their habitats, and what they need to survive and grow. Last week our curious Kinders wanted to know how polar bears stay warm with the freezing temperatures, icy water, and relentless wind in the Arctic. We learned in one of our non-fiction books about how polar bears have thick fur and a thick layer of fat to keep them warm. What better way is there to learn than to fully immerse ourselves in the lesson? Our kindergarteners got to see how the blubber, or fat, on a polar bear really does keep them warm. We made a blubber glove for the children to feel the difference of what the freezing water feels like to us and to the polar bears. The kids loved this experiment and loved discussing how amazing it is that God created polar bears to have a thick layer of blubber because he knew they would need it to survive in their habitat.
Introducing our kindergartners to the scientific method has been so much fun, especially when we used gummy bears to grow our very own polar bears in the classroom. The students were asked, “What will happen when we put a gummy bear in these four different solutions: water, salt water, baking soda, and white vinegar?” They were very creative when making their hypothesis of what would happen to the “polar bears” in each of the solutions. We labeled each cup with the different solutions and placed one gummy bear in each cup. The kids thought it was so neat that they immediately started to see bubbles surrounding some of the bears. Patience was a big part of this science experiment because we had to wait overnight to see what would happen.
Excitement filled the kindergarten classrooms the following morning when they saw what happened to their polar bears! We learned that the gummy bear that soaked in water grew to be the biggest, the salt water shrunk the gummy bear, and white vinegar dissolved the gummy bear to where it lost its form, or even completely dissolved.
These little scientists' eyes lit up with wonder and excitement at every turn of our science experiments last week!