We had a fun day in class this week. We did a bunch of experiments and discussed other ones that we could do with students. The first experiment that we did was called a pipette and a penny. All you need for this experiment is a pipette, water, and a penny. The goal is to see how many drops of water you can get on the surface of a penny without the water dripping off. My estimate before I tried the experiment was 20 drops. The two times that I tried it I got 30 and 26 drops. It is crazy how many you can fit on that one little penny! I think this leads to great discussions with kids like what are the variables in this experiment? And how does the penny hold that much water?
The next experiment that we worked on was called sweethearts and water. For this experiment you need candy hearts (big and small sized), a pipette, and water. We predicted which phrase on the candy hearts we thought would come off faster. I predicted that the large one would come off faster and I was right! When we did the experiment we put water on the hearts and the phrase on the large candy heart came off much faster. Then we had the opportunity to have a fun discussion about why would thought this happened.
We continued with some more density experiments. Coke vs. diet coke was a cool experiment to take part of. We guessed which we thought would float/sink, coke or diet coke? The coke sank and the diet coke floated. Minute maid also sank. So from that experiment we know that coke is more dense than water and diet is less dense than water. I think this would be a great segway into healthy lifestyles as well as discussions about density and what else we think is more or less dense than water.
The next part was the layered liquids experiment. This involves dish soap, kayro syrup, alcohol, water with food coloring, and oil. All you have to do for this experiment is pour the different ingredients in layer by layer and observe which is the most dense and which is the least dense. I really want to try this at home and see what my friends have to say! We also talked about the blubber glove and I remember doing that in school. That is definitely something that I will use with my students in the future.
The last part of our day involved an investigation of the Children's Museum. The first question that we were told to look for was: what are five or more things around the museum that inspire ideas for your own classroom? I found a bunch of things around the museum. I really like the idea of having a classroom "vault" where the item in the vault could be changed around. It would be cool to have a life size plane or ship in the classroom for a specific unit. I also like the idea of bright circle carpet squares and low tables. I think it would be really neat to have smells from a country that you were studying available in your classroom as well.
We also were asked how we would adapt CSI into school without a museum. I think that I would probably use the drinking fountain, sink, hose, and maybe a pond or a fish tank if we had one available. I learned so many things when exploring the museum. I learned that Ahlan Wa Sahlan means "Welcome" in Arabic. I also learned that 43% of Egypt's population lives in cities along the Nile river and that they drink licorice in Egypt. I thought it was interesting that in Egypt the children serve the adults. Another thing I learned was that polar bears have rough furry paws to walk on the ice and that Anne Frank's family lived in Frankfurt Germany where Anne went to Montessori school.
It was a really neat experience to see the live performances of Ruby Bridges and Anne Frank. It really brought me back and put things in my life into perspective. I had a great day at the Children's Museum!
