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!

Living Waterfalls

This past summer my husband, Chris, and I took a cruise to the Western Caribbean. One of our stops was in Jamaica and we went to Dunn's River Falls. It is a waterfall that is approximately 180 feet tall and stretches over 600 feet long. While it has some slight man made improvements, it is mostly natural and you can climb up this waterfall. It has several lagoons, some of which are up to 5 feet deep.

 

Dunn's River Falls are fed by spring water, which is rich with calcium carbonate and depositing travertine. These falls are described by geologists as "a living phenomenon" because they are continuously rebuilt by the sediments in the spring water.

 

It was one of the coolest things we have ever done and although not all of the climbing was easy, it was well worth it. I highly recommend you visit Dunn's River Falls in Ochos Rios, Jamaica!

 

I also recommend you use a better water camera so it doesn't mess up like ours did. Oh well, guess we will have to go again!

Can We Believe Our Eyes?

I recently had to watch a video for science called "Can We Believe Our Eyes?" It talks about many misconceptions regarding how students learn.

I love so many of the quotes in this video,

"We've always assumed if teachers teach, students learn."
"We can't just have hands-on learning, we must have heads-on learning."
"Seeing isn't believing, believing is seeing. You see what you want to believe."

One of the things that is so evident in this video is that students do not want to give up their former beliefs. We must deconstruct those beliefs and allow them to ask questions to figure out the correct information. As we provide them with a safe learning environment, time for experiments and hands-on learning, and an abundance of research materials, we are leading our students into the right direction and will only then be able to show them what actually happens. Until they understand why something they believe isn't correct, they will never overcome that objection!

Creating Meaningful Activities in Science

While reading Stella Vosniadou's Article "How Children Learn," I was very interested in the meaningful activities chapter. It is so important to keep children engaged in learning, and it helps when they are able to see real life comparison. Some of the examples Vosniadou uses are using debates to help improve oral language, participating in a classroom newspaper to improve writing skills, and learning science by participating in a community or school environmental project.

This article made me think of other activities teachers can use to expound upon the lessons they are teaching their students. Below, you will see the ideas I came up with. Feel free to comment with other ideas we can all use one day.

- When teaching measurements, bake something as a class. You could even have one where you do not follow the measurements completely and it ends up a mess. Or omit an important ingredient like baking power, baking soda, or oil and hypothesize about how the end product will be as a result of the missing ingredient.

- When learning about time, discuss during what times of the day do students typically do certain activities (ex. eating breakfast, homework, etc). Then take it to a larger level and discuss time zones. Talk about what students in the US are doing at 9am, what time it is in Japan, and discuss what Japanese students may be doing at the time it is there. Set up a pen pal exchange program, or use technology to video chat with someone in another country so students can see what they are doing.

- When discussing planets, moons, and stars, talk about the different environments on each planet. Allow the students to hypothesize whether humans could live on these planets, and why or why not. Visit a local planetarium where the students are able to see the planets, hear a lecture, and explore around the center.

I am so excited to get to bring real life to my classroom one day. What are some other examples of ways we can do this for our students?

Science In A Creekbed

On Saturday, I was able to go to the Discovery Center in Murfreesboro with my "Teaching Science" class. It was a great day of learning how to make science fun for young kids. We made hats for a nature walk, binoculars, and participated in a number of different activities we can one day use in our classroom.

My favorite part of the day was when we were down in the small creek behind the center. We all put on rain boots and went exploring. It was so interesting to pick up rocks and look at all the different animals that call those rocks their homes (although to be perfectly honest, I didn't pick up any rocks because I don't like to get my hands dirty, but I looked at plenty others picked up). I can see myself doing a similar activity with my future students where we will first predict what types of animals we would see in a creek, study the ones we find, and then research those when we return to the classroom. Drawing the animals and then writing a short essay on them would be a great way to follow up on this activity.

Hollywood: Defying Lunar Phases One Movie At A Time

This past Friday night, I had the privilege of attending the first star night of the semester at MTSU. These consist of a lecture and use of the high powered telescopes outside. The lecture this past week was a great eye-opener to how many times Hollywood gets proven facts wrong.

The professor discussed 3 different movies and how we could tell different things about the moon phase based on where the sun was, shadows on the ground, and many other things. In each of these movies, something was not quite right. It is definitely something I plan on looking for in movies from now on!

The moon has many phases and each phase tells a unique story about where the moon is in relation to the sun and earth. There is a new cycle of phases each month. It is important to remember that one half of the moon is always illuminated by the sun, even when it is in the new moon phase and from earth we don't see a moon at all.

I thoroughly enjoyed this lecture and all I learned about lunar phases. I look forward to teaching my future students about lunar phases and would love to create a month long lesson where we track the moon and discuss what we see!

Brand New Adventure

It's official! I have started graduate school for elementary education and I am SUPER excited about it! This will be used to track my progress, keep a record of my thoughts, and of course, for my class assignments. I look forward to all I will learn in the next two years and I can't wait to become a teacher!