Comparing Mixtures and Solutions Activity: 8 Hands-On Stations for Teaching Mixtures vs. Solutions (TEKS 4.6B)

Chris Kesler · 8 min read

Pour a teaspoon of salt into a cup of water and stir. Pour a teaspoon of sand into a different cup of water and stir. Both cups now hold water plus something else, but only one of them looks the same minutes later. Ask a 4th grader what's different about the two cups and most will say "the salt disappeared." The salt didn't disappear. It dissolved. And that one word is the whole point of TEKS 4.6B.

That's TEKS 4.6B. It asks 4th graders to compare and contrast mixtures and solutions, such as cereal in milk and salt water. For most kids at this age, "mixture" and "solution" are the same word. They use them interchangeably. By the end of this lab, they know that every solution is a mixture, but not every mixture is a solution, and they can tell which is which by looking at a cup.

The Comparing Mixtures and Solutions Station Lab for TEKS 4.6B puts five cups in front of every group. Salt and water. Sugar and water. Sand and water. Oil and water. Soil and sand. Kids stir each one, look at what happened, and sort the cups into mixtures and solutions. By the end, they can explain why ocean water is a solution but cereal in milk is just a mixture.

⏱ 1–2 class periods 📓 4th Grade Science 🧪 TEKS 4.6B 🎯 Built-in differentiation 💻 Print or Digital

8 hands-on stations for teaching mixtures and solutions

A station lab is a student-led activity where small groups rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) at their own pace during one to two class periods. You become a facilitator instead of a lecturer. You walk around, spot-check, and break misconceptions while the kids work through the rotation.

The Comparing Mixtures and Solutions Station Lab has four input stations (where students take in new information on what makes something a mixture or a solution) and four output stations (where they show what they learned). Here's what's at each one.

📷 Image slot 1 — add screenshot

📷 Image slot 2 — add screenshot

4 input stations: how students learn mixtures and solutions

🎬 Watch It! —

A short YouTube video introduces mixtures and solutions. Students stop watching at the 1:30 mark and answer three questions on the answer sheet: what a mixture is, what was special about the saltwater and soda mixtures shown in the video, and what the ratio of ingredients would look like if you took a random sample of any part of a solution. The video front-loads the vocabulary so kids walk into Explore It! already knowing that solutions are evenly mixed all the way through.

📖 Read It! —

A one-page passage called "Snack Time Science: Mixtures and Solutions" follows Jack and his little sister Emily making snacks. Jack pours trail mix into a bowl (a mixture; Emily can pick out the peanuts, raisins, and chocolate one by one). Then he stirs lemonade powder into water (a solution; the powder broke into tiny pieces too small to see). Vocabulary is bolded throughout (mixture, substance, separate, solution, dissolves). Three multiple-choice questions follow plus the vocabulary section. The passage is written for 4th-grade readers with short sentences and snack-time examples kids recognize.

🔬 Explore It! —

This is the heart of the lab. Each group sets up five cups. Cup #1: 250 mL water plus 1 teaspoon salt, stirred. Cup #2: 250 mL water plus 1 teaspoon sugar, stirred. Cup #3: 250 mL water plus 1 teaspoon sand, stirred. Cup #4: 250 mL water plus 250 mL oil, stirred. Cup #5: 2 teaspoons soil plus 2 teaspoons sand, stirred. Then they answer five questions: what cups 1 and 2 have in common, what cups 3, 4, and 5 have in common, which cups are mixtures, which cups are solutions, and what differences they noticed across all five. The salt and sugar cups disappear into clear liquid. The sand sinks. The oil floats. The soil and sand just sit there mixed. Five cups, five different answers, one big takeaway.

💻 Research It! —

Ten reference cards. Two image cards show the sand-and-water mixture (sand visibly settled at the bottom) and the sugar-and-water solution (clear liquid all the way through). Two particle diagrams show what's happening up close: in a mixture the red and blue particles cluster in patches; in a solution they're spread evenly across every square inch. A definition card explains that all solutions are mixtures, but not all mixtures are solutions. A "Dinner Time!" image card shows pizza, salad, soda, cookies, salad dressing, and vinegar bottles. Four analysis questions tie the cards together: explain how a solution is different from a mixture, give evidence from the images that mixtures are easier to separate, draw conclusions about how dissolved substances behave, and sort the dinner items into mixtures and solutions.

📷 Featured station deep-dive — add screenshot of the Explore It! task card

4 output stations: how students show what they learned

📋 Organize It! —

A two-column card sort: Mixture Only and Solution. Eight cards to place. Mixture Only side: milk and cereal, dirt and water, box of crayons, bowl of jellybeans. Solution side: dishwashing liquid, ocean water, pancake syrup, iced tea. The crayons and jellybeans cards are the ones that catch kids off guard. They don't usually think of "things sitting next to each other in a box" as a mixture, but it is. Ocean water is the one that catches them on the solution side. Most 4th graders assume ocean water is just water, not water with salt dissolved in it. The sort is the cleanest place to spot which kids really get the distinction.

🎨 Illustrate It! —

Two before-and-after sketches side by side. First, students draw what red, green, yellow, and blue marbles look like before they're combined and then after. Each marble keeps its color and shape; you can still see them all. Second, they draw a glass of water and sugar before and after being mixed. The sugar disappears; the water stays clear. They label which drawing is the mixture and which is the solution. The visual contrast of "I can still see the parts" vs. "I can't see the parts anymore" locks the concept in for visual learners.

✍️ Write It! —

Three open-ended questions in complete sentences. First, what do mixtures and solutions have in common (both are two or more substances combined). Second, how can you tell if something is a solution just by looking at it (the parts are evenly mixed and you can't pick them out). Third, why is it easier to separate the parts of a mixture than the parts of a solution. The third question is the one to watch. Kids who really understand the lab can explain that in a solution the dissolved substance is broken into pieces too small to see, so picking them out one by one isn't possible the way picking peanuts out of trail mix is.

📝 Assess It! —

Three multiple-choice questions plus a fill-in-the-paragraph that uses the five Read It! vocabulary words (substances, separate, mixture, solution, dissolve). The multiple choice asks what's true about mixtures (the parts keep their own physical properties), what happens to a substance when it dissolves in a solution (it breaks into pieces too small to see), and which of four items is a solution (lemonade, not salad, trail mix, or cereal and milk). The lemonade vs. cereal question is the cleanest check on whether kids learned the lab or just memorized words.

Bonus Challenge It! station for early finishers

🏆 Challenge It! —

Four optional extensions: create a paper or digital advertisement selling a mixture of your choice, with a description using physical properties and a picture; make a bookmark with one side themed "mixtures" and the other side themed "solutions," both with definitions and examples; write a journal entry describing four mixtures or solutions in your daily life using physical properties; or build a matching game of mixtures that ARE solutions and mixtures that are NOT solutions (at least 12 cards). Requires teacher approval before they start.

How this fits into a complete Comparing Mixtures and Solutions unit

This Station Lab is the Explore day of our full Comparing Mixtures and Solutions Complete 5E Lesson for TEKS 4.6B. The complete two-week unit follows the 5E method of instruction and includes an Engage hook, the Comparing Mixtures and Solutions Station Lab for Explore, PowerPoint slides and interactive notebook pages for Explain, student choice projects to Elaborate, and an Evaluate assessment.

Most 4th-grade teachers I work with grab the full 5E because the Station Lab lands hardest when it's surrounded by the days around it. But if you just need a strong hands-on day on mixtures and solutions, the Station Lab on its own does the job.

Two options

Comparing Mixtures and Solutions 5E Lesson cover

Full 5E Lesson $13.20 Get the 5E Lesson

Comparing Mixtures and Solutions Station Lab cover

Just the Station Lab $7.20 Get the Station Lab

Materials needed to teach mixtures and solutions

Materials beyond what's in the download:

Five clear plastic cups per group for the Explore It! station. Clear cups are important because kids need to see what's settled, what's dissolved, and what's floating. Use 9 oz or larger so 250 mL of water fits with room to stir.
About 1.5 liters of water per group. Tap water is fine. Pre-fill a pitcher or two so kids don't crowd a sink during rotations.
1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of sand, and 2 teaspoons of soil per group. Table salt and granulated sugar work fine. Play sand or aquarium sand works for the sand. Potting soil works for the soil.
250 mL of cooking oil per group for the oil-and-water cup. Vegetable oil is cheapest. Save it after class; this is the one part of the lab where the materials don't need to be discarded right away.
Plastic spoons or stir sticks. One per group is enough; they'll rinse it between cups.
A measuring cup or graduated cylinder for the 250 mL pours. If you don't have enough graduated cylinders for every group, one shared station with a measuring cup works.
Colored pencils or markers for the Illustrate It! station (red, green, yellow, blue minimum for the marbles drawing).
Pencils and the printed answer sheets (included)
A device with internet for the Watch It! station

If you're like most 4th-grade teachers, the messiest part of this lab is the cleanup. Have a waste container at every station (an empty gallon ice cream tub works) and a stack of paper towels nearby. The oil-and-water cup is the worst offender. Pour it into the waste container, then wipe the cup before stacking.

Standard covered: Texas TEKS 4.6B —

Compare and contrast a variety of mixtures and solutions, such as cereal in milk and salt water.

See the full standard breakdown →

Grade level: 4th grade physical science

Time: One to two class periods (45–110 minutes total). Plan for two periods the first time you run this lab because the Explore It! station has five cups to set up, stir, and observe.

Common student misconceptions this lab fixes

"Mixtures and solutions are the same thing. They're just two words for combining stuff."
This is the most common 4th-grade misconception on this standard, and the entire lab is built to break it. Kids hear "mix" inside both words and assume they mean the same thing. The Read It! Jack-and-Emily passage names the difference up front: in a mixture you can see and pick out the parts (trail mix); in a solution one substance dissolves into another and the parts are too small to see (lemonade powder in water). The Explore It! five-cup investigation makes it physical. Salt water and sugar water look like clear liquid. Sand water, oil water, and soil-sand do not. Same word in the kids' heads at the start, two clearly different categories by the end. The Organize It! mixture-only vs. solution sort then locks the distinction in with eight everyday examples.
"When the salt dissolves, it disappears. It's gone."
Kids see the salt go into the water, stir, and see clear water. To them, the salt is gone. The Read It! passage names this directly: the lemonade powder broke into tiny pieces too small to see, but it was still there, mixed evenly with the water. The Research It! particle diagram makes it visual. In the solution card, red and blue dots are spread evenly across every square of the grid. The substance is still there at the particle level, just smaller than the eye can see. Cup #1 (salt water) in Explore It! drives this home. If you taste it (or even just talk about tasting it), the salt is obviously still there even though you can't see it. By the time kids reach the Write It! "how can you tell if something is a solution just by looking" question, they're describing dissolved substances as broken into invisible pieces, not as gone.
"If I can't pick the parts out, it's not a mixture anymore."
4th graders define "mixture" with a fingertip test. If they can pick out the pieces (like peanuts from trail mix), it counts. If they can't (like sugar dissolved in water), it doesn't. The Research It! card titled "all solutions are mixtures, but not all mixtures are solutions" is the fix. A solution is a SPECIAL TYPE of mixture, not a different category. Both involve combining two or more substances; the difference is just whether one of them dissolves into the other. The Organize It! mixture-only vs. solution sort is built around this. Ocean water gets sorted as a solution, but it's still a mixture too. Iced tea is a solution, but it's still a mixture. The visual hierarchy (all solutions are inside the bigger circle of mixtures) is what makes 4.6B different from 4.6A, and the lab spends the rotation getting kids to see it.

What you get with this Comparing Mixtures and Solutions activity

📷 Inside-the-product — add screenshot of Read It passage or sample answer sheet

When you buy the Station Lab, you get a single download with everything you need:

Print version at two reading levels (Dependent for on-grade, Modified for additional support) plus a Spanish Read It! passage
Digital version as PowerPoint files (works in Google Slides too) at both levels — for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom
Teacher Directions and Answer Key for both versions, all keys included
Station task cards ready to print, laminate, and drop in baskets at each station
Reference cards for the Research It! station (10 cards covering the sand-water mixture, sugar-water solution, particle diagrams for both, the "all solutions are mixtures" definition card, the Dinner Time image card, and the four analysis questions)
Sort cards for the Organize It! station (8 cards across mixture-only items like milk-and-cereal and bowl-of-jellybeans, and solution items like ocean water and iced tea)
Student answer sheets for each level

Tips for teaching mixtures and solutions in your 4th grade classroom

Two things make this lab go smoother the first time:

1. Pre-stage the Explore It! materials in a bin per group.

The Explore It! station has five cups, five substances (salt, sugar, sand, oil, soil), and a measuring step. If kids have to get up and find each ingredient mid-rotation, you'll lose 10 minutes per group to traffic. Stage one bin per group ahead of time: 5 empty clear cups, a small portion of each substance in labeled snack bags or paper cups, a stir stick, and a measuring cup. Set the bin at the station and have the rotation pick it up on the way in. The whole experiment is much smoother when the supplies are pre-portioned.

2. Stir each cup BEFORE answering the questions, not after.

4th graders want to answer the task card questions as soon as they read them. For this lab, that doesn't work. Cups 1 and 2 look the same as cups 3, 4, and 5 BEFORE you stir. The differences only show up AFTER you stir, wait 30 seconds, and look. Walk the rotation through this on day one: set up all five cups, stir all five, wait a moment, THEN answer the questions. The sugar and salt cups become clear; the sand sinks; the oil separates back into layers; the soil-and-sand just sits mixed. If kids answer too early, they miss the whole point.

Get this Comparing Mixtures and Solutions activity

Comparing Mixtures and Solutions Station Lab for 4th grade physical science — TEKS 4.6B

Buy the Station Lab — $7.20

Or if you want the full two-week experience with the Engage hook, Explain day, Elaborate extension, and Evaluate assessment all included:

Buy the full 5E Complete Lesson — $13.20

(Station Lab is included)

Frequently asked questions

What does TEKS 4.6B cover?

Texas TEKS 4.6B asks 4th grade students to compare and contrast a variety of mixtures and solutions, such as cereal in milk and salt water. By the end of this lab, kids should be able to look at five different cups (salt water, sugar water, sand and water, oil and water, soil and sand) and sort them into mixtures and solutions. They should also be able to explain that all solutions are mixtures, but not all mixtures are solutions.

Is this kids' first time meeting the words "mixture" and "solution"?

For most 4th graders, yes, in a formal science sense. They've heard the words in casual conversation (we "mix" things all the time at home; a "solution" to a problem). The Read It! Snack Time Science passage anchors the science definitions in everyday snacks: trail mix is a mixture, lemonade is a solution. The Explore It! five-cup investigation lets every kid physically test the difference, and the Organize It! card sort locks the eight examples in. By the end, they have working definitions they'll use for the rest of 4.6.

How long does this Comparing Mixtures and Solutions activity take?

One to two class periods (45 to 110 minutes total). The Explore It! station has five cups to set up, stir, and observe, which is the longest piece, so plan for two periods the first time you run this lab. Once your class has the rotation routine down, most groups can finish all 8 stations in one period.

How messy is this lab really going to be?

If you're like most 4th-grade teachers, the mess is your biggest worry. Realistically, the soil-and-sand cup and the oil-and-water cup are the two that'll require cleanup. Have a waste container per group (an empty gallon ice cream tub or coffee can works fine) and a roll of paper towels. Pour the oil and the soil mixtures into the waste container at the end, wipe the cups, and stack them. Total cleanup time after the last group rotates: about 10 minutes if you set it up right.

Can I use this in a 1:1 digital classroom?

Yes. The full digital version (PowerPoint or Google Slides) works in 1:1 classrooms and Google Classroom. Students drag digital cards at the Organize It! mixture-only vs. solution sort and type their responses on the answer sheet. The Explore It! hands-on five-cup investigation is harder to digitize. If you can't run the physical cups, a video demo of you mixing each one (filmed in 5 minutes the morning of) and embedded in the slides gives kids the same observations to discuss.