We love kicking off the school year with science activities that lead the students through the scientific method. Steve Spangler is a great resource for us. His science ideas are always a big hit with our classes.
Our first activity involved water cubes. The students were presented with the question: What will happen when we put the cube in distilled water? They were amazed at the results. The water cubes grew to over 200 times their sizes! This activity led to other extension activities, such as, What will happen if we put them in colored water? What will happen if we stack the colored cubes in a test tube? By this time our kids were hooked into science and began asking their own questions about the cubes. Some of their questions included: Will they grow if we put them in salt water? What will happen if we put them in Coke? What will happen if we freeze them? They were using the scientific method independently to find their answers.
Our next activity involved cabbage juice, driveway salt, and baking soda. Our question was: What will happen if we mix these three ingredients. We first mixed the salt and the baking soda. Nothing happened. Then, we poured the cabbage juice into the sealed bag. The chemical reaction astonished the kids!
In the meantime, we have been reading a biography on the famous scientist Albert Einstein. Our students are fascinated by the information they are gleaning from this book. They want to read more information on their own about him.
With all of this background knowledge we armed our students with, and their interests, we felt that they were ready to write about what scientists do. They found a science sticker scene from Oriental Trade, and the students created their own lab scene. One student exclaimed, "I never knew that stickers could be so interesting. I thought they were just for little kids!" We explained to the students that the first part of the writing process is brainstorming our ideas, and possibly getting more information. The students read through a PowerPoint about what scientists do, and took notes. Tomorrow morning we are going to talk about the trait of organization, and how we are going to elaborate the details of our notes into an explanatory paragraph.
Next week we will share our finished product of our writing, and our Albert Einstein project.
Kim and Anne
