"Discover Me" Bottles!

For our first science experiment, we created "Discover Me" bottles! Inside each bottle there is:

• Water
• Oil
  
• A picture of the child
  
• Pennies (the number of pennies depend on how old the child is)
• A bead with the first letter of his/her name
• A foam letter that is the first letter of his/her first or last name
• Pieces of plastic straws or foam that each child cut (the number of straw pieces depend on how old the child is)
• Glitter

Each child used a funnel to pour the water, oil and glitter into their own bottle.  Then for every object that was added to the bottles we guessed if it would sink or float.  As with most experiments, unexpected things happened:

• Every child had to shake their bottle vigorously (when I had intended the bottles to be turned gently to so we could see the oi and water move around each other and see the objects float :-p)  
• After the bottles were shaken, the oil became opaque.
• All the glitter that the kids put into their bottles clumped together also making it difficult to see the objects inside the bottles...
• Of course, the kids had no idea what my expectations were so they were so excited about their "Discover Me" bottles and they cannot wait to take them home! (By the way, CJ now wants to make his own bottle just like theirs...)
  
• The "Discover Me" bottles will be sent home on Monday because I decided it was a good idea to glue the caps onto the bottles so no one would be temped to do an experiment of their own by taking the caps off at home ;)