Chasing Cheerios

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Fun with Magnets

The girls and I have been experimenting with magnets for the last couple of weeks. We jumpstarted our exploration of magnets by reading Mickey's Magnet. (the paper on the side is hiding identifying information...this is an old library book that was thrown out and the name of the library is written on the cover).

Mickey's Magnet is about a boy who drops a box of pins, and his father shows him how to pick them up with a magnet. He learns why some things are magnetic and some are not. He also learns how to magnetize objects. The girls love this book!


One of our first magnetic activities was a magnetic treasure hunt. I hid a bunch of objects in rice, and they used our magic magnetic wand to find them. They both LOVED this!


We took turns magnetizing safety pins. We then used them to pick up tiny nails. (I was watching E(1) closely, and she made no attempts to eat any of these objects...thank goodness!)


After we magnetized the safety pins, we put a magnetic "rock" in a pitcher of water. I showed them how we could move the rock around in the water using the magic magnetic wand. They were amazed and then excited to have a turn. We spent a long time experimenting with this. We couldn't get the rock over the edges of the pitcher, so we had to reach in and grab it. They thought that was great, too, though :)



The book and our magic magnetic wand are now on our science shelf awaiting more explorations and fun!

3 comments:

  1. My 4 year old and I had a blast with magnets a couple months ago. Make sure you try magnetic painting! Put a cookie sheet on a stand of some sort that you can clamp it to. Put paper on cookie sheet with a few blobs of paint in various places. Add a few magnets on top and the use your wand under the cookie sheet to move the magnets around and through the paint. FUN!

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  2. I am glad you posted about this because that was one of my favorite books as a kid and I had totally forgotten about it.

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  3. Kristi- I painted with magnets wiht O about 3 years ago, but never with E! I'm sure she would love it, too. Thanks for the reminder!

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