Let Santa’s Helpers engage your Year 3 & 4 students in festive science! Who doesn’t love Christmas lollies?  In this video conference, we take a journey into the wonderful world of sugar, where we learn about some of the physical properties of sugar and its use in making a variety of sweet Christmas treats.  Students perform several experiments on how sugar and other sweets interact with water in unique and sometimes beautiful ways.

Sugar is a substance that has many interesting properties, not least its alluring taste. Sugar can melt and solidify just like water, and indeed can dissolve in water to form a solution known as syrup. If excess sugar is dissolved in hot water, it will begin to crystallise out as the mixture cools. Controlling the rate of recrystallisation leads to sweets with different textures and consistencies. Additionally, sweets are usually coloured and flavoured to increase the enjoyment. All these factors are investigated in this program to some degree, and the overall aim is for students to consider the design aspects of creating sweets, beyond just their sweetness.

Year Level: 3-4

Duration: 1 hour

Students will perform 3 experiments in this program, and all the materials required are sent out in a STEM in a Box kit. Schools will need to provide water and 6 stopwatches or other timing devices, and students will need a writing implement.

This program discusses solids and liquids, and the first experiment involves conducting a fair test. While not essential, it would be useful if these concepts have been introduced previously in the classroom.

In this video conference students will:

• Learn that sugar melts and solidifies just like water.
• Understand the importance of fair tests
• Gain insight into the design process of manufacturing various sweets

In this video conference students will:

• Conduct a fair test to determine what type of sugar (coarse or fine grained) dissolves fastest in water.
• Undertake an activity that helps visualise sugar dissolving by placing Skittles® in a tray of water.
• Perform an experiment to find out what the “m” on M&Ms® is made of.

Science: Science Inquiry

• Observations can be used as a basis for posing questions to identify patterns and relationships, and to predict the outcomes of investigations (VC2S4I01)
• Scientific investigations to answer questions or test predictions can be planned and conducted using provided scaffolds, including identifying the attributes of fair tests, and considering the safe use of materials and equipment (VC2S4I02)
• Findings can be compared to those of others, including, as appropriate, whether a test was fair or not, to enable conclusions to be drawn, and may lead to the identification of further questions for investigation (VC2S4I05)