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    Home » Primary Science » Key Stage 1 Science » Everyday Materials » Waterproof roof?

    Waterproof roof?

    May 22, 2014 By Emma Vanstone 3 Comments

    This is a simple, but fun activity that even very young children will enjoy. I did it with my 3,5 and 7 year old and they loved it, especially when it came to making it ‘rain’.

    LEGO waterproofing experiment

    Before starting we spent a few minutes talking about what we expected to happen and how we could make the investigation a fairer test.

    We decided that the roof tiles would be the most waterproof, followed by the sticks and then grass. However we did discuss that it would depend on how many sticks and how much grass we used and that it would be hard to make the comparison fair.

    LEGO HOUSE

    Materials

    LEGO house

    Roof materials – we used LEGO tiles, sticks and grass

    Water sprayer

    Method

    Place your chosen roof onto the house and spray water on top. We used a set number of sprays to make it a fairer test.

    Record any moisture inside the house.

    DSC_0016

    Results

    As predicted the roof tiles kept the inside of the house dry, the grass let some water in and the sticks were also waterproof.

    lego house

    Improvements

    To improve the accuracy of this investigation we decided what we should have done was use grass, sticks and tiles up to a certain hight above the top of the house and kept that constant for all conditions.

    Recording the amount of moisture inside the house was difficult. Perhaps if we’d placed paper inside and changed it for each condition we could have compared the dampness of each piece.

    Can you think of any other improvements?

    More LEGO posts

    15 Fun ideas for Science with LEGO

    More Waterproofing posts

    How waterproof is it?

    Which is the most waterproof roof

     

    Last Updated on April 8, 2016 by Emma Vanstone

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    These activities are designed to be carried out by children working with a parent, guardian or other appropriate adult. The adult involved is fully responsible for ensuring that the activities are carried out safely.

    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. Almost Unschoolers

      May 27, 2014 at 2:41 am

      I like the way this got you thinking not only about how to test the different materials, but how to create a fair and accurate test – great problem solving activity!

      Reply
    2. Natalie PlanetSmartyPants

      June 02, 2014 at 2:43 am

      Great idea for an experiment. I was thinking of making a “water level gauge” inside to measure moisture and putting a paper towel square inside to see if it gets wet at all. Thanks for sharing with After School Link Up.

      Reply
    3. Jessica

      April 06, 2015 at 6:47 pm

      I might use water tinted with a little bit of blue food coloring and put a paper towel inside the house. The blue water would show up much better on the paper towel and the results of each type of roof could be compared.

      Reply

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