Separation of Mixtures by 6v

In grade 6 we finished our Elements, Compounds and Mixtures unit with some practical work of separating mixtures. Filtration and evaporation were familiar to students. They could easily explain how they would recover salt from saltwater using evaporation. It was a little trickier to describe how they would recover water from saltwater. These boys built a simple desalination plant. After a lot of problem solving, they were able to recover some fresh water. 

We also tried separating the colors of a pen using chromatography. Water worked well for most pens but we also tried some other solvents.