Where did it go?

From the house

• 3 clear cups or glasses of water
• Sugar and salt
• A little sand or uncooked rice
• A teaspoon

How to play

1. Hold up the sugar and ask, “What will happen when we stir it in?” Let them guess.
2. They stir a teaspoon of sugar into one cup, salt into the next and sand or rice into the last, 20 stirs each.
3. Look closely together: which ones disappeared, and which sank to the bottom?
4. Give them a sip of the sugar water: still sweet, so the sugar is still there.

Fit it to your child

• Easier: Use just sugar and rice, and hold the cup steady while they stir.
• Harder: They stir sugar into one cup of cold water and one of warm water from the tap, and guess which will dissolve faster.

Words to use

• dissolve
• stir
• disappear
• still there
• sink

Why it helps

They discover that the sugar hasn’t vanished: it has dissolved into pieces too tiny to see, and a taste proves it’s still there.