How to Teach Kids Science With Magic Sand

 is so excited to share Teacher Buzz with the Patch community.  Teacher Buzz is a blog written each month by one of our fabulous teachers.  Our teachers use this opportunity to share with you their favorite things to do with preschoolers.  It could be a much loved recipe, a craft idea or even a cool science experiment.  

Our second issue of Teacher Buzz is brought to you by Cynthia Pollak, who teaches a 5 day Pre-K 4 year-old class. 

Regular Sand vs. Magic Sand 

In this experiment, the class observed the different ways that regular sand and Magic Sand react with water.  For this activity you will need small amounts of both regular sand and Magic Sand.  Magic Sand starts out as normal sand which is then dyed and covered with a water-repelling polymer that keeps it dry. It can be purchased at

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/product/1331   

Fill 2 cups with water.  Use a spoon to sprinkle a small amount of regular sand into one of the cups.  Notice how the sand imediately sinks to the bottom and becomes brown.  Next, sprinkle a thin layer of Magic Sand on the surface of the water in the second cup.  Discuss why the Magic Sand floats on the surface whereas the regular sand sinks.  Now pour a steady stream of Magic Sand into the cup of water and watch as it takes on the shape of a sand castle!

During this experiment, the teachers asked the children several open-ended questions, which allowed the children to think and hypothesize about what would happen and why.  Each child had the chance to recreate the experiment and discover their own new observations.

We hope you have fun recreating this experiment at home!