Sponge Relay!

I found the idea for this little race on the "I can teach my child" blog that I am loving!
http://www.icanteachmychild.com/2010/08/sponge-relay.html
I filled two bowls with 8 cups of water each. Max and Mia were each armed with a sponge. The goal was to use the sponge to carry as much water as possible from the large bowls to the smaller bowls that I had placed about 12 feet away.

The race began and they were both very diligent at soaking up water with their sponges.

When the sponges were filled they ran to the smaller bowls.
As you can see there was much water loss along the way.

They squeezed as much water as they could get out of the sponges into the bowls.

Then they ran back to the start and filled their sponges from the large bowls and repeated the process until the big bowls were empty.

They both worked really hard! We measured the water that made it into the smaller bowls. Max ended up with 5 1/2 cups of water. I thought that was great! Mia had a little less and finished with 4 cups of water, but that is still half of what she started with!
There was no cheating and they both enjoyed the little water race.