This week Nursery have been Scientists whilst investigating how humans grow and change, driven by our key text “When I Was a Baby” by Deborah Niland. We have been introduced to our new science characters, who will help us to navigate investigations. We have focused on “Predicting Pip”, helping the children to understand how to make predictions or reasonable guesses about what may happen before experimenting.

To activate our learning and hook the children into the week we played a game of “Guess the Baby?” Looking at photos of the children as babies and guessing which baby was each child. We then sorted activities or tasks that babies Can or Can’t do, explaining why – thinking about how undeveloped new babies are.

Our first practical experiment this week was “Growing Gummy Bears”. This linked to what humans need to grow. We investigated which of four different liquids; salt water, sugar water, white vinegar or plain water were the best conditions to grow the bear. The children made predictions of what they thought may happen to the bears as we dropped them into the ramekins.

We then observed how the bears changed and grew in the different solutions over 24 hours. The results revealed that the bear in the salt water turned white from absorbing the salt particles and stayed very small, the bear in the vinegar began to melt and fall to pieces (one of the children explained this process as “dissolved”), the bear in the sugar water grew bigger but was very sticky and slimy because of all of the sugar in the water. Finally the bear in the regular water grew the most and was perfectly in one piece, showing that clean water was essential to growing.

Our second experiment linked to what we need to help us grow. The children had previously looked at what we needed to grow during our Tranquil Tuesday Crew, using picture prompts to help scaffold their understanding.

Then today Nursery observed how humans need oxygen to breathe, grow and survive. The children made predictions about the experiment from a diagram shown during our Wise Wednesday Crew. They thought about what would happen to the candle if a jar was placed over the top? Some of our answers included; “The glass will break”, “It will burn”, “It will go off fire”, “It will make a big light” and “It will run out of breath”.

They then observed as I modelled the experiment, fixing a candle into play dough, placing three sets of coins around a bowl and filling the base of the bowl with coloured water. Then I lit the candle and placed a jar over the top of the flame, resting on the coins. The children observed as the oxygen was used up in the jar and the flame was suffocated, causing the water to rise up the glass – taking the place of the oxygen. They watched in awe as the flame went out and listened carefully to the sound of the vacuum made by the water. One of the children likened the experiment to “When to go to bed and pull the covers over your head, if you stay like that, you could suffocate because there’s no air.”

We have had lots of fun and excitement in Nursery this week experimenting and are looking forward to the rest of the week. Great learning Nursery!