This week’s STEM lab idea was fun! Whenever M&M’s are involved, it is a good time. The point of the STEM experiment was to see what sorts of liquids affected the outer coating on M&Ms. Students were in charge of testing out different things to observe and record. We used water and baby oil to see how M&M’s would respond to both liquids.
Materials:
- M&Ms
- Dixie Cups
- Baby Oil
- Water
Students made predictions about what they thought would happen in the baby oil and what they thought would happen in the water. First, they split their page in half. Then, they had to write a full sentence (first grade) about what would happen with the water and a separate sentence about what would happen with baby oil.
Step 1:
For this simple STEM Lab idea, students aren’t required to do too much engineering and experiment. Today is more about observing.
They will begin by pouring their liquids into their Dixie cups.
Step 2:
Allow kids to simply observe. After a while, in the water, the M&M will lose its coloring and the M will slowly float to the top of the water and completely disconnect from the candy. The kids will hopefully get to watch the letter itself stick together and float to the top of the water.
Step 3:
Recording time… The kids used a sheet in their learning logs to write about what happened. Under each of their predictions in step 1, they will record what happened. Some of the students didn’t see the letter M float, but they still saw how the two liquids affected the M&M.
Regardless of how this STEM Lab idea ends up for students, it’s a great predict and observe experiment for the students.
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