Water, Water, Everywhere, part 2!

May 29th, 2015

Good morning, everyone. Our students are in an assembly so we thought we would get a jump start on the blog and get back to where we left off with our water and weather activities.

Last week we talked about how we introduced the vocabulary words evaporation and condensation with our students. From there, we went into the water cycle. We read and completed a Sketch to
Stretch with the Reader's Theater called Water Cycle Adventure. The purpose of the Sketch to Stretch was to help the students visualize what happens to a drop of water in the water cycle. We also used this visualizing to create a mural of the water cycle.

To connect with our theme of water and weather, we used the MAC program Numbers to create a circle graph showing how much of our earth is covered with fresh water, salt water, and land.  This led to a lively discussion about the importance of conserving our natural resources.

Our next step was learning about clouds because they play an important part in the water cycle and our weather. Before we did our research about the different types of clouds (that will shared with you in our next blog), we decided to start with reading another African Tale about a cloud that changed the weather. It was called, Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema. We used Christine Boardman Moen's idea called Crayon Conversations from her Better Than Book Reports: More Than 40 Creative Responses to Literature to summarize the tale. It was a lot of fun and it stretched their thinking because they had to do it independently. We felt they were ready for it because we have done many summarizing activities throughout the year.

That's all for now. We look forward to sharing more cloud activities with you next time.

Kim and Anne

Water, Water, Everywhere!

May 15, 2015

We just finished a very fun Water/Weather Unit. It has quickly become one of our favorite science units. Today we will share a few activities that we did to kick-off and begin our unit. We know you can't use these this year, but it might be a great way to start off your next school year.

We began with an inquiry based lesson that required the students to make observations and inferences, and to draw conclusions. We handed each group of students two cups of Insta-Snow that we got from Steve Spangler. We also handed them two cups of clear liquid. One was water and one was rubbing alcohol. The students did not know what the liquids or powders were. They had to make observations about these items. Then, we poured the water into one cup of the Insta-Snow, and the rubbing alcohol into the other cup of Insta-Snow. This caused quite a reaction with our students. They couldn't believe what they saw. They were then able to draw conclusions about the liquids and the powders. They were amazed that mere water created the snow. That's what led us into checking out the cool properties of water.

Before adding liquid.  Snow is crystal-like.

After adding liquid.  Water made the Insta-Snow fluffy and rubbery.  The alcohol didn't absorb at all.

Then, we made a water molecule, and talked about how these molecules are sticky, or cohesive, and want to stick together. This was the perfect time to introduce the concept of surface tension. We watched a BrainPop  video about it, and then did The Amazing Race from AIMS Education. The kids never knew how much fun it could be playing with a drop of water. They had a grand time competing to see who could stretch their drop the farthest.

Water molecules in liquid water flow over each other.

Our next step was to focus on evaporation and condensation. We used the Insta-Snow with water to demonstrate evaporation. We left it out for a week. When we went back to observe, we had the crystals back and not the fluffy snow. Even though we didn't see it, we drew the conclusion that the water had evaporated. To try to see water evaporating we put a wet toy under a clear vase. After about a week, we saw that the water droplets were clinging to the side. We could infer that the water from the toy must have evaporated and then condensed. Once again the kids were amazed at what water could do!

Insta-Snow after water evaporated.

Water droplets are clinging to the side of the glass.

It feels so great to be back! Most likely, we will be blogging every other week from now on. Have a great weekend!

Kim and Anne

Coming Soon...

May 1, 2015

Hi everyone! We've actually taken a longer hiatus from the blog than we expected. We will be up and running again in two weeks. Here is sneak peek at a few of the exciting things we plan to talk about over the next few weeks.

Cloud research for our expository writing.  We have great cloud sites to share.

Water cycle mural created after reading a reader's theater.

Used a mentor text to write this "How To Clean Your Room" essay.

It feels great to be back.  We cannot wait to share these and other ideas in two weeks.

Kim and Anne