We have some new "arrivals" in our garden. We spotted a few more things growing on our last visit. Soon we will have some green peppers and poblano peppers!
The disappointment of not actually being to eat the Skittles disappeared after the students saw what happened when we placed them in water. Our science activity focused on Predictions and Observations. After observing what happens to a single Skittle when placed in a dish of room temperature water, the students then predicted what would happened when three Skittles were placed in the same dish. They were quite surprised with the results. We recorded the result by drawing a picture of our observations. The lesson concluded with the students hypothesizing as to what caused these unexpected results. After successfully building a space lander to get our astronauts on the ground, the 6th graders are now focusing on getting OFF the ground. Our next engineering project is to build a Stomp Rocket! http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/stomp-rockets/ This project will require the students to build a paper rocket and then use a compass, meter stick and a little geometry to calculate the height achieved by their rockets. Today we made and practiced using our Rocket Altitude Trackers and then figured out the height of a ball thrown into the air. The Sixth graders share their work and their thoughts on the importance of failure and the challenges of the NASA Space Lander engineering design project. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/touchdown/ A quick visit today to our courtyard garden and everything is looking good. When I look at our tomato and sweet potato plants it's hard to believe that the students grew them from seeds! We will have lots of yellow pear tomatoes, red tomatoes and sweet potatoes! The lettuce seeds have sprouted and are growing as well. The basil plant is getting bigger by the day. I'm not sure what kind of meal we can make :) but the students are happy to see their efforts have paid off. The WMES after-school program begin yesterday and the Gardening Club wasted no times in getting their hands dirty. Nine girls plus WMES parent Mrs. Sloan and Mr. Hoskie (Science Lab) began by pulling weeds and overgrown grass. We were careful to spare the milkweed plants because we are creating a pollinator garden. We are hoping to attract lots of butterflies, bees and other flying insects. The girls did a great job and there were quite a few squeals of excitement as we found beetles, worms, slugs and even an old snake skin! We carefully planted bee balm, blue mist and cone flowers and then cleaned up the area. Although it will be a long wait, the girls are excited to see the fruits of the labor and promised to help maintain the garden The kindergarteners are learning how to sort and classify. We used Legos and practiced sorting by color and shape. The "landers" with the best results all had a similar design. Since one of the design restrictions was that the students couldn't build anything above the platform many of the teams created what was effectively an below platform parachute. Instead of trying to build shock absorption into the bottom of their platform, they worked to slow down the speed of the descent so the lander would float softly to the ground. All teams using this design were able to drop their lander safely from a height of 9 feet!
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Ray HoskieElementary school teacher 14 years..science lab 2 years! Sharing the daily activities of my K-6 students as they learn, explore and discover. Archives |