Outer Space

One of my fellow science classmates recently posted about the Science and Nature section on Pinterest. I LOVE Pinterest and am so thankful for all of the ideas I can find on there to use in my classroom one day.

I looked at the Science and Nature page and one of the subgroups that popped up was outer space. The pictures are all so beautiful and make me want to have a big unit on space!

Grandpa: The Space Man

My grandpa  worked for NASA and helped build some of the Gemini, all the Apollos, and the Space Shuttles too. He used to always come to my classroom when I was a kid to talk all about what he did and about the space program. 

Some of the everyday items we use today, we have the Space Program to thank.

Marathon Runner Blankets

Heat Absorbing Sportswear

Ball Point Pens

UV Blocking Sunglasses

Cordless Tools

I am so glad for all I have learned from my grandpa and all the amazing things that NASA has done for the world!

Volcano Experiments

I had such an amazing time learning about volcanoes for our presentation in class. There is so much to learn and a ton of hands on experiments you can do with your students.

I did some more research and came up with some more great experiments we can use in our classrooms! I've included lots of links below! 

In this one, you can make a glowing or rainbow volcano!

Ice volcanoes just sound like great fun!

Underwater volcanoes are extremely neat and are another great way to explain what happens during an eruption.

It would also be very cool to talk about people who study volcanoes and the tools they use. In this experiment, the students can build a seismograph and measure shaking.

Make sure to include the one we did in class because it will help to avoid misconceptions! Happy experimenting! 

Should I Eat That?

I recently read an article about nutrition labels. It talked about how most people do not actually read the labels, and even if they do, most people do not understand what the labels are actually saying. 

"Researchers at Johns Hopkins University wanted to see what would happen if they made calorie labels more blunt -- specifically, if the labels told consumers how much exercise it would take to burn off the energy in a soda."

The results showed that people who saw these labels either purchased a water, left without a drink, or purchased a smaller drink size than they originally had planned to purchase. 

Most students do not understand calories and burning them off. That is perfectly fine! But what students need to understand is cause and effect. I think you could do a lesson on calories, not just on what they are, but how they can help or hurt your body. You can even have them make predictions on how many calories are in certain foods, and how long it would take to burn those calories off.

America needs to get healthy and the classroom is a great place to start that change!

For the record, I am all for eating cupcakes, cookies, ice cream, and all things delicious. Those things make my life better and I would die without chocolate. But I try to eat those things in moderation to stay healthy!

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere

Fall is one of my favorite seasons! I love sitting around a fire, eating s'mores, dressing up for Halloween, and carving pumpkins. The only thing I love more than carving a pumpkin is roasting the seeds and eating them...YUM!

My husband and I had to carve two pumpkins this year, and they were completely different sizes. One was big enough to fit a baby....

And one was just a regular pumpkin for our house.

I roasted the pumpkin seeds out of both pumpkins. In the bigger pumpkin, there were about 2 cups of seeds. And this was a BIG pumpkin. It was super heavy! The smaller pumpkin had 1.5 cups of seeds and it was much smaller and not very heavy at all. It surprised me that the smaller pumpkin had almost the same amount of seeds as the bigger one.

This got me thinking about a project we could do in my classroom one day. There would be so many different ways you could measure a pumpkin: weight, circumference, mass, stem size, amount of pumpkin seeds, etc. After your students documented all of this information, you could see if there was any correlation between the size of a pumpkin to amount of seeds inside. 

This project would be a great way to integrate math and science and would be very fun! Watermelons would also be a good option! 

My Breakfast Was Science

 

Eggs. We've all eaten them. Whether you use them in your baked goods, to prep your chicken before you fry it, or eating them for breakfast, you have enjoyed a little bit of science.

 

Eggs can be used in so many different ways, but just looking at breakfast, there are multiple ways to cook them.

 

Some like eggs over easy....

 

Some like scrambled eggs...

 

Others even like them hard boiled...

 

This is a great way to discuss changing forms or states with students. From the science behind the ways they cook, the different forms they end up in, to the describing the ways they look, there are so many fun experiments and activities you can do with your students! Science really is everywhere and it doesn't have to be crazy experiments for your students to learn. 

 

Snowshoeing

This past February, Chris and I visited my best friend in the ENTIRE world and her husband in Wisconsin. Although I would never go up north in the winter again, we had a fantastic time. One of our adventures on that trip was snowshoeing on Lake Winnipesauke. It was so much fun and I couldn't believe we were able to cover so much ground, fairly effortlessly. At the time, I didn't put much thought into it, but I recently researched why it is so easy.

 

Basically, snowshoes distribute your weight across a larger surface area than your normal shoe. Snowshoes help you maximize pounds per square inch (PSI), which keeps you from sinking in the snow. One size snowshoe does NOT fit all! It is important to find a snowshoe that is for your size foot, weight, and for the type of activity you will be doing.

 

If you live in an area with snow, or even sand, this would be such a cool experiment to do with your students. They could make predictions on which ones would work best and why. Then they could try walking on the sand or snow without them and then with them.

 

 

We are standing on Lake Winnipesauke

 

 

Hiking up a mountain

 

Going down isn't quite as easy as going up!