Phizzi enquiry: paper clip painting

Activities that explore how things move, change shape and behave encourage children to be curious, observe the world, ask questions and begin to develop their own scientific ideas. Paper clip painting is a simple investigation that can be carried out at home or in the classroom.

The Science Talk at home booklet provides some useful additional information to help you support and encourage your young learner(s).

A Phizzi Foundation enquiry, taken from the EYFS Science Talk programme for Ogden primary partnerships.

My Year 1 children were absolutely gobsmacked at the ‘painting with paperclips’ investigation and thought that the metal moving around the paper plate on its own was ‘magic’! When I put the resources they would be using on the floor and asked them to come up with some questions, it was astonishing to see 5 year olds think of every possible question they could test in the investigation, from changing the size of the magnet, to what we painted with, to the colour combination of paints and the thickness of the paper plates.

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Published: 30 March 2020

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