Capacity Experiment

Today I lead a simple experiment with the class where I had 8 different shaped containers which I filled with water. I also added different colours of food colouring to each to both make it easier to see the water in the jar and to add a fun, colourful element to the experiment. The first thing I did was talk about what a prediction was and what 1 cup looks like. I had a 1 cup measuring cup which I used to pour all the liquid into to count haw many cup the container held. I also had some containers which held less than one cup so I introduced the concept of half to the class, which I was happy to notice they were able to pick up well.

For the first two containers, I asked the students to make a prediction about how much water was in them and we wrote the predictions on the board. On the right is the predictions the students made about one of the containers (the students names have been blurred out). Once all predictions were made I poured the water into the measuring cup as they counted how many times I filled it. For the other 6 containers I handed out a worksheet with 3 columns: Container, Prediction & Results. As a class we looked at each container and each student wrote down their individual predictions. Then we measured the water and wrote down the results. We did this for the remaining 5 containers.

The experiment was lead in full by me, though I wish I could have allowed each student to have a turn to do something but many of the containers were awkward or wide shapes which made them difficult to pour into the measuring cup. Nonetheless, the students seem to really enjoy this activity and many made very good guesses. When it came to counting the cups to find the results all the students joined in enthusiastically.

Here are some pictures from the activity:

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