Children’s parents, carers and other family members all help shape children’s ideas about themselves and what they should do with their lives, including what would be a suitable future job for them.
A family STEM storytime is an opportunity to introduce STEM ideas and activities in a relaxed and enjoyable way. STEM storytime also provides an opportunity to positively model how adults and children can share stories together.
Each session begins with a high quality STEM story which introduces a STEM concept or problem to the group. The session then continues with a practical activity based on the concept introduced by the story. This is designed to be completed by an adult and a child working together. They can successfully complete the challenge together, ensuring their experience of STEM is a positive one.
For this activity, you’ll invite children’s parents or carers into your setting, so they can work alongside each other.
Topsy and Tim Go to the Doctor is widely available from bookshops and education suppliers.
Granules – small grains or particles. Granules are coarser than powders.
Mixture – a combination of two or more substances.
Solution – a solution is made when a substance (salt granules) dissolves into a liquid (water).
Dissolve – a solid breaks down into tiny particles that spread out throughout the solvent (liquid).
Do these things before the session
You will need about 50g of salt per child to allow for spillages. This works out as a 750g pack of salt per 15 children.
Pour the salt into a ziplock plastic bag and add a few drops of food colouring. The amount of colouring you need will depend on the type you use, so you may want to try a few drops at a time so that your salt doesn’t become too soggy.
Zip up the the bag, then shake and massage the colour into the salt so all of the grains are coloured.
You may want to make a few bags of different coloured granules.
Think about where to set out your containers of coloured granules, containers of water, spoons, pipettes and individual containers for the families to do their mixing with. If families are going to record their results you will need a white board or large piece of paper divided into thirds with the sections labelled 1, 2 and 3.
We have found it works well to give equipment out after reading the story, so that everyone can concentrate on listening at the start of the session.
We usually put the coloured granules on a tough tray in a central area, and spread the containers of water around the room on different tables or surfaces so families have enough space for mixing.
The investigation needs to be repeated three times, so the families will need to rinse out their beakers. If it isn’t practical to use a sink, a bucket of warm soapy water on the tough tray with the granules works well.
Using warm water causes the salt granules to dissolve quicker than cold water, if you have only a short time for the activity.
If you have already had story times with your families you will know what works best in your setting, but if not you may want to consider:
You could start the session by showing families the pharmacist poster and telling them that a pharmacist is a job or career in medical STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). Perhaps families have members who work in healthcare or medicine? Maybe some of the children or family members might like to become pharmacists in the future?
Tell everyone that for this activity, they are going to become pharmacists.
If you have already done some of the activities from the pharmacist unit, you could ask the children to explain to their families what a pharmacist does. If this is a new topic, you could ask the families to talk about a time they have seen or been to a pharmacy.
You could tell the families that pharmacists dispense or prepare and give medicines to a patient. They might work in a pharmacy, hospital, or GP practice. They give advice about prescriptions, how much medicine to take, the possible dangers of medicines, and how to use and store medication. Some Pharmacists also make and test new medicines.
You could introduce these attributes by telling the families that attributes are personal skills or qualities that we already have, and that are needed to work in a STEM career. You could tell them that pharmacists are:
Creative when they make new medicines and when they prepare and make medicines for patients.
Curious about what is wrong with their patients when they are unwell and about which medicines will be best to make them better.
Observant: they need to read prescriptions carefully and make sure they give the correct amount of each medicine to their patients.
You know the families in your setting and the best way to read a story to them, but to help we have designed these STEM focused questions to use alongside the questioning you would usually use when reading a story.
After reading the story, please make sure that the children in your setting understand:
You could show the pharmacist poster again and use the attributes in the activity explanation. You could tell the families that they are going to be:
Creative like pharmacists as they are going to be making medicines,
Curious like pharmacists as they are going to investigate to find out how many pipettes of water they will need to add to different amounts of the medicine granules for it to become a medicine
Observant like pharmacists as they need to look carefully at the medicine to see if all of the granules have dissolved.
Families are going to take one spoonful of granules, and count how many pipettes of water are needed to dissolve it.
You could model how to take a spoonful of granules, put it in a beaker, add a pipette of water and stir. You could use this opportunity to explain what you mean by dissolve: when the granules dissolve it will look like they have disappeared, but they are still there in the water. You could show the families your beaker and ask if they think the granules have dissolved or disappeared yet.
Tell the families that they need to continue adding water a pipette-full at a time and stirring until the granules dissolve. When your granules have dissolved, you could tell the families that although it looks like the granules have disappeared, they have just mixed with the water to make a transparent (see-through) liquid called a solution.
Remind children not to taste the ‘medicine,’ and not to put any of the equipment in their mouths.
If you are recording your results of your investigations, you could show the families how to do so. Make a chart (table) in which you can note the number of pipettes of water needed to dissolve different amounts of granules. Record your result for 1 spoonful of granules.
Challenge the families to test 1, 2 and 3 spoonfuls of medicine granules, and to note how many pipettes of water are needed to dissolve each.
Families will need to rinse their beakers after each test.
When the families have completed the three tests, you could look at the results. You’ll probably have found that the more spoonfuls of granules are in the beaker, the larger the number of pipettes of water needed to make a solution.
You could remind the families of the attributes: being creative by making medicine, curious about how much water is needed for the granules to dissolve and observant by noticing when the granules have dissolved.
You could tell the families that if they have enjoyed today’s activity, maybe they can be pharmacists in the future.
This section is for your information. It’s intended to be useful background – you’re welcome to include it in the session, but we expect you’d more commonly draw on it when children or their families have questions.
Substances that dissolve in a liquid are called soluble substances; ones that don’t are called insoluble.
In a solution, the liquid is the solvent and the substance that’s dissolved into it is the solute.
Materials like sugar, salt and flour can be poured, but they are all solids. Each grain of salt is a particle made up from more particles . The particles are very close together, arranged in a regular pattern, have low energy and vibrate around each other.
The water we used is a liquid and has randomly arranged particles with can move around each other and have greater energy than those in solids.
When a solute (salt) is added to a solvent (water) the forces between the solute particles are overcome. The particles break apart and spread out. This allows the particles of the solute to mix in with the particles of the solvent. The solute particles become widely spaced throughout the solvent. The solute becomes fully dissolved.
The usual dissolving salt investigation would be dissolving spoonfuls of salt in water until no more can be dissolved. This is making what’s called a saturated solution. We thought it would be more interesting for families to observe the changes in the salt as more and more water was added and it became a solution.
You would also need to add quite a lot spoonfuls of salt to a beaker of water before it became saturated and EYFS children may not be able to count this accurately!
You can speed up dissolving a solid by stirring. This helps to distribute the solute particles evenly throughout the solvent, leading to more frequent collisions and interactions between the solute and solvent molecules, resulting in the solute dissolving faster in the solvent.
You can speed up dissolving heating up the solvent. The solubility of a solid solute usually increases when the temperature increases. We did this by adding warm water.
Using fine powder rather than larger pieces of solute speeds up dissolving. In a powder, the contact area is greater as more solvent comes into contact with the solute, so it is the faster to dissolve. This is why icing sugar dissolves faster than granulated sugar.
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