Magnets

To allow children to explore the how magnets attract and repel.

I have fond memories of playing with magnets at my grandmother's house.  She had two dog figurines, one white and one black and they had magnets on the bottom.  No matter how I tried they would never join face to face.  When I tried to do it, one or the other would spin around and they would join nose to tail, it was the opposites that attract. It created hours of entertainment.

The science of magnets:

To introduce the idea of magnets first I read Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley by Aaron Blabbey which discusses how opposite friends attract. 
I then showed the children how magnets are similar explaining that magnets have 'poles' or sides one that is called 'positive' and one that is called 'negative'.  What happens with these sides is that the opposites attract - that they pull together.  Whereas if you put the two postive or the two negative sides together they would 'repel' or push away from each other. 

The Magnetic dog by Bruce Whatley is about a dog who is magnetic, in that he attracts food.  After the story we looked at magnets as magnetic and they can attract certain things like iron and aluminium.  We used the magnet to see what it could attract.  Things like paperclips, staples, pins but not things like apples, paper or fabric.  We also discovered that a strong magnet to pick up a whole chain of paperclips.

The last book Stuck by Oliver Jeffers is about objects getting stuck on a tree.  I made up a laminated model of the tree and the items that got stuck in the tree and put magnets on the back.  I used a magnetic board and put the tree on the board and the children had to remember the items that got stuck and one by one we stuck them to the tree. 

As with most of my demonstrations after the storytime session children came up and explored the magnets making them attract and repel and finding what items were attracted to the magnets.

Book suggestions:  

 

Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley – Aaron Blabbey
That magnetic dog – Bruce Whatley
Stuck – Charlotte Calder and Mark Jackson

Craft suggestions:

I decided to use magnetism in the craft so children made and cut our paper fish.  We then placed paperclips on them.  I had pre-made some fishing rods with a chopstick, wool and a magnet.  I then had a pretend pond and children could go fishing for their fish.  I showed parents how easy it was to make a fishing rod with a fridge magnet at home.