Liquid #1

How do we become scientists?  This driving question has been fueling our project.  Last week I brought out an apple and asked the children to forget what they knew about it.  "Pretend you don't know what this thing is.  You're a scientist and you want to investigate.  What can we discover about it?"  We then used our 5 senses to describe it.  It was hard to forget that deep down we knew what it was.  So I figured I'd put their scientific skills to the test.

I brought out a jar of a mystery substance.  Immediately the children wanted to guess what it was.  I told them I would not be telling them the name of it, because I wanted them to come up with their own thinking.  This was the first of four jars I would be bringing in.  

What is it?

The children used their senses to understand this liquid.  

Here were some of our ideas:  

It looks like yellow, applesauce, apple juice, water, golden, and vinegar.

It sounds like nothing, a drain, zombies, and a ghost.

It smells like olive oil, plants, cinnamon, playdoh, 16 year old cake, and stinky. 

It feels like slippery, water, wet, sticky, smooth, and like a baby.

I wonder if you adults have a guess?  Don't tell!

Wants and needs

About this time of year I talk to the children about what it means to want something or need something.  Many relevant science and social studies concepts are brought up like what it means to be alive, what we need to survive, how we can get the things we want, etc...

Talking about wants and needs are important as we think of the holidays.  There are many families in our community who cannot afford "wants" and even some "needs."  This year I am continuing the tradition of adopting a family in need from the Children's Hospital of Michigan.  We just received the details of a family in need and discussed what was on their wish lists today.  I wrote down items on cards and the children helped me sort.  

This process will take us some time, but we will keep you posted.  Keep an eye out for a "Giving Tree" by the office!

Balance work

Carrying on from the seesaw experiments, the children got the chance to work with a balance.  A balance is a tool that can compare the mass of two objects.  It is essentially a seesaw.  The children knew what the seesaw looked like when the mass of each object was even (it balanced) and they also knew what the seesaw looked like when the mass of each object was uneven (the heavy side went down).

First we compared.  Next we found how much something weighed.  Our unit of measurement was kangaroos!  On one side of the balance we put an object.  We put kangaroos on the other side one at a time until it balanced- meaning equal weight.

On to magnets!