Family Matters: Science Experiments to Celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day

I'm squuueeeezzzing this one in right under the wire - a matter resource designed to help your kids understand how matter (solid, liquid and gas) changes AND give you some usable gifts for Mother's Day or Father's Day (or just Loved One's Day!). :) 

One of my favorite experiments is this liquid viscosity experiment (which ties in to a "breakfast in bed" motif).

I designed this experiment knowing that one of the toughest things to understand about solids is that things like salt, sugar and flour are all solids - they're just verrrrrryyy small pieces - they don't "flow" like liquid, they tumble!

Kids will explore gas properties by blowing bubbles ...

And learn about melting solids by making a crayon sun catcher! 

Just a little taste of what's inside (you can see the table of contents above!) - pop on over to my store if you're interested in seeing more! 

ENERGY! Kinetic. Potential. Light. Heat. Motion ... And Beyond!

WHEW! We have finished our big energy unit, and I'm delighted with how it turned out {and it's up on TpT for you to use, if you're looking for some energy fun!}. The kids really got into sources of energy, types of energy - and we had some fun integrating reading and writing all the way through.

We started with hula-hooping, of course. {way back when I had the old header, remember?}  - We talked about kinetic and potential energy, and how we transferred energy from our bodies to the hoop!

We learned about several different types of energy, like light, heat, motion, gravitational, electric and chemical, and searched through several magazines to find different types of energy. We even discovered that energy can take multiple forms!

Soon we took things up a notch by learning about the Law of Conservation of Energy. We read a non-fiction passage {included in the unit on TpT} and made a quick anchor chart ...

Then began crafting our energy chains, to show the transfer of energy from one thing to another!

Then we started wondering ... how do we even know energy is out there? We can't see or feel it, most of the time. Enter ... ENERGY DETECTIVES! 

 I gave the kids bags with several items that related to one another (i.e. a sleepover). The kids had to use their inferencing skills to figure out a) what activity was being described, and b) why those items proved the existence of different kinds of energy. The kids had a blast, and then they created their own energy mystery bags! :)

Finally {we actually completed this project throughout the energy unit, but I think it'd be a great culminating activity}, we worked on some problem-based learning projects to sum-up what we know about energy. There were two different (differentiated) problems. First, the President of the Energy committee contacted our class with a unique problem ... 

What should we do? Create public service announcements, of course! The kids had to read a non-fiction passage {included in the unit}, and persuade their peers that kinetic (moving) energy is better for their bodies than potential {stored} energy.

It was a great way for them to practice more persuasive writing, AND they had the choice of how to do it. Several kids chose to write a script for a commercial, but many chose a poster. Here are a couple examples of their adorable work ...

The other group had a slightly more complex task - they were contacted by the President of the Energy Committee about the problems we're having with energy sources that pollute the earth. They were asked to pick an energy source, read a non-fiction passage {included}, complete a Web Quest, and design a persuasive PSA recommending more or less use of that particular energy source. They were also given choices of their presentation style. Here are two excerpts from their PowerPoint and cartoon presentations.

They did a great job, and I'm so proud! We had a GREAT time learning about energy, and integrating several other reading and writing skills into our work as well!

If you're interested in purchasing this unit, you can pick up the bundled resources here. The resources for this unit, sold separately, include:

• Energy Posters
• Energy Projects (together) AND separately - Kinetic vs. Potential and Energy Sources WebQuest
• Energy Unit 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Energy Kickoff!

We started our energy, forces and motion unit about a week ago, and kicked it off with a special visitor - my friend Ms. HB , who's a HOOPER {on the side}. Have you ever "hooped" with an adult hoop or seen someone do it artistically? It is SO SO SO fun. 

Soooo, Ms. HB kindly took a morning off from her real job and brought us HOOPS! She's super gifted with the hoop, but even those of use who aren't quite as coordinated enjoyed it ... :) {Oh look ... there's my outfit from that day!}

We talked about potential and kinetic energy (the hoop doesn't have any potential energy when it's on the ground, but when you pick it up, that movement gives it energy that is stored to turn into kinetic energy!). We tied in pushes and pulls (moving forward with your body to make the hoop go). We talked about the three types of energy that our state wants kids to know about at this age (light, heat and motion). {Although I'll probably introduce chemical, gravitational, and nuclear} We even tied in Netwon's three laws of motion - by talking about inertia that makes the hoop keep moving and gravity that pulls it down, and how we have to push hard to make the hoop move faster! 

As I first started looking at these standards when I came back to Georgia to teach, I was a *little* confused about why we focus on light, heat and motion ... but in all my preparation I found there are MANY more kinds of energy - sources, types ...  where do kinetic and potential energies fit in? I also had a rough time finding resources that explained energy types in kid-friendly language.  I found this book, and of COURSE the BrainPop videos (that are awesome), but not a lot of other resources that weren't too hard or too easy. 

         

So, I made these little posters to help my kids {and me!} sort out types of energy in kid-friendly language. If you think they'd help you, they're available from my TpT store, and will be part of my upcoming energy unit {hoping to get that posted this weekend}!

Study Notebooks: Space!

Every quarter we keep track of our learning in our social studies or science unit, and share them at our Community Night. What I love most about our notebooks is that they accumulate and make a wonderful record of the learning and growth that child has made over the time that they've been at our school.

We start with a blank Bare Book, and slowly add either journal entries, activities or diagrams. When it's complete, we decorate the cover with a fun design that represents that quarter's work. Since I've shared all our moon work {here, here, and here}, it's clear our last unit had to do with space. Soooo .... our cover was the night sky and moon! 

I was excited to try this technique I saw on Pinterest. The author calls it "puffy paint ..." I call it FUN!!

First you take a big dollop of shaving cream, and add some glue: 

You take some construction paper (we used light blue to give it some color), and smear it around! 

It only takes a couple of hours to dry, and then you can cut it into any shape you want! 

For the background of our books we used a dry tempera pat to create a wash, and then we used a tissue to wipe most of it off: 

When it was dry, we added some glitter paint and wrote the names and ... voila! The adorable covers, each one slightly unique. 

Inside ... our learning! We started the unit by visiting NASA's space station site for kids - we learned what a day in the life of an astronaut would be like, then we made our own packing list: 

We started waayyyyy out in space, and made acrostic poems about galaxies:

 

Then we moved in a little and studies constellations, using two AWESOME resources that I HIGHLY recommend - first we activated our schema and learned about constellations with the "Solar System Spectacular" unit by Lesson Plan SOS, and after we'd learned a little about them, we created our own with the ingenius "Graphing the Constellations" packet from Anna Colley.

After constellations, we moved onto stars, learning about their brightness, color, and life cycle using my "Stars" unit.

 

 

We zoomed into our solar system, learning about our own sun and it's characteristics - the layers of the sun and movement through the sky, as well as its effect on shadows and seasons. 

  

Fiinnnaaallly we started our moon work - we debunked ten "moon rumors" with my "Moon Misconceptions" unit - all of which are documented here, here, and here. OH! And we used the totally adorable oreo cookie activity from Yvonne Dixon's "Sun, Moon, Earth ..." unit, and the ADORABLE moon and earth craftivity from Leah Abatiell's "Mr. Moon" unit. I wish I had pictures! 

Have you seen this little poem? So helpful! 

We culminated our unit with our Community Night, packed it all up and started all over again the next week! Onto ENERGY, forces and motion and MATTER. Bring it on, science! :) 

Energy!

We started our energy unit today!

We read this book {I love the "Let's Read and Find Out" books}, and made a quick anchor chart ...

When we were done we began our research projects - I'll be back to share our "hook" for this unit and our completed projects!

Exploring the Moon's Characteristics

We've just completed a really fun unit - as you saw in my community sharing post, we've just wrapped up our space unit. As a teacher, some of the *best* weeks/months in the classroom are times when I'm able to integrate all our learning together into one integrated unit. Thanks gosh for inspiration late in the evening one Saturday night. {You know those nights you lay in bed, and can't shut off your brain?} Moon misconceptions!

I set it up with my kids by telling them something horrible happened! We were attacked by an awful moon monster, spreading TEN vicious rumors about the moon - things like, "The moon is made of cheese,"  "There is a man in the moon," "The moon changes shape in the sky." Can you believe it? They are precious, and love play-acting like this. 

Lucky for us we had several non-fiction reading articles, math measurement experiments, and science experiments to help us fight this ruthless rumor-mongerer.  ;)  Two of the activities we did were "the man in the moon" article reading and math craftivity to prove there's nobody living there and a "moon bounce" experiment to prove the gravity on the moon ...

We also did some pretty fun other things -- read other non-fiction articles, completed experiments, even made our own sweet moon model treat!

Moon experiment to explore phases of the moon. 

Ebbinghaus illusion - the reason the moon looks bigger than the stars around it.

Ingredients set up for our creation of our very own moon model made from crispy rice treats. :)  

Completed moon layers! YUM! 

It was a smashing success, and something I'm pretty excited to continue when we learn about energy and forces in motion this upcoming week. I guess there's always a chance this rumor monster could return ... ;)

If you're interested in completing the man in the moon and moon bouncing activity with your kids, you can find them here at my TpT store,  but the best deal is the full "moon misconceptions" unit that includes those two activities, plus our fact and fiction pre- and post- test sort, along with all the correlating activities to dispel the TEN rumors that horrible moon monster put into the world {it's a huge unit - 60 pages full of moon fun!!}.

Happy learning!