DIY Hourglass or Sand Clock – Activity for Understanding Type of Mixture

Today we are learning about mixtures and their types.

1. Homogeneous
2. Heterogeneous

Before we begin with theory part, we will be doing few simple activities to understand the concept.

Me and my younger one made an Hourglass or Sand Clock.

I have been saving these pretty bottles for Hajmola Candy for past 6-7 months for this activity, finally putting these to use today.

 

Material Needed:

1. Any two small glass bottles of same size.
2. Small Feviquick Tube
3. Some Coloured Rangoli powder.
4. and a screw driver to make hole in the bottle caps.

Here are the picture steps of how we did it:

 

 

I made a hole in the lids using hot screwdriver, so that we make the hourglass the sand or rangoli will pass through it from one bottle to other.

 

Use feviquick to glue the two lids together. Then close the lids over bottles to get something like this.

 

 

Now comes the fun part, filling one of the bottles with colorful Rangoli.

So we also made a funnel using paper. (Something extra that she learnt)

 

Funnel ready , bottle ready and my little one is all set for pouring activity.

Our colorful bottle is all set.

 

The second bottle is added to this assembly and our colorful hourglass is ready.

So I thought, but the rangoli stopped flowing after a while. So had to make a bigger hole in the lids and we tried it 3-4 times.

We also realized that after sometime to ensure a proper flow , we had to open the top bottle slightly.

With this little work around we managed to get a nice working sand clock or rather rangoli clock.

Here is the video of the working rangoli hour glass

DIY Rangoli Hour Glass

 

How to use this activity for introducing mixtures?

Explain the child that while pouring different color Rangoli , you are actually making a mixture in a bottle. Point the different layers of colors and explain that these are different layers are different constituents of mixture.

Once the child has played with sand clock/Rangoli clock 4-6 times. The colors will mix and a homogeneous mixture will form. Now share with child why now the mixture is homogeneous? It has same color and consistency and you can no longer identify the different color constituents any more.

Revise what you have done in this activity and emphasis that in heterogeneous mixture you can always identify constituents distinctly but you can not do that for a homogeneous mixture.

 

Hoping you will also try this at home and share this fun learning activity with your child.

Do share pictures of activity you do with your kid in comments section.

Happy learning !