There are many things I can’t believe, and one of them is
that it’s April already. We’re entering the crunch time of year – testing
is either knocking on the door, or upon us already. So upper grades, we
have you finishing your last units in the next two weeks. Lower grades,
we’ve got you paced out a little further. I hope you find the ideas below
useful.
Kindergarten Ideas: We’re on
to the first standard in your core, about the nature of science, and conducting
investigations. . I’ll quote Objective 1 here: “Generating Evidence: Using the processes of scientific
investigation (i.e. framing questions, designing investigations, conducting
investigations, collecting data, drawing conclusions)”
This is a great one for rolling things down ramps. We
use the ramp thing a lot, but it’s just really easy to put together
investigations, and kids like rolling things. For starters, compare two
different types of balls, and see which one goes further when rolled down the
ramp, across the carpet. Have the kids predict, then talk about data, and
what data you can collect to prove which one went further. From there,
you can do a lot of things to elaborate – change the ramp height, find balls of
similar size but different weight, compare different surfaces (roll down the
hall, or across tile.) The idea is we’re trying to get them to think
scientifically about learning something about the world.
Ramps
are like soy. Useful for so many things!
First Grade Ideas: Next
week is a great week to go outside in the morning and find the moon. Even
if you’ve done that already this year, actually, especially if you’ve done that
already this year, go check it out. Observe those patterns. Is it
in a different place in the sky, compared to earlier this year? Look back to
our soda straw moon spotting rig from earlier this year. Check out my
blog post about that from back in December:
http://mrqsciencenews.blogspot.com/2015/12/science-ideas-for-12715.html
Second Grade Ideas: “Observe falling objects and identify things that prevent them
from reaching the ground. “
Design parachutes. Find a nice high place to drop stuff – second story
railings work great. A small stuffed animal works well as a payload, and
adds a little drama to the action. Use a stopwatch to time how long it takes to
hit the ground, and refine the designs as they go! Doesn’t get much better than
that!
Third Grade Ideas: Here’s
something a little different for your forces and motion. It applies to
this indicator: “Show how these concepts apply to various
activities (e.g., batting a ball, kicking a ball, hitting a golf ball with a
golf club) in terms of force, motion, speed, direction, and distance (e.g.
slow, fast, hit hard, hit soft). “
Though it’s really more of an engineering challenge. They are called
Stomp Rockets, and they’re really simple. There is a 2 liter bottle,
which is attached to a PVC pipe. The pipe angles up, and you slide a
paper “rocket” over the other end. Stomp on the soda bottle to push the air
out of the tube, thus launching the rocket, like blowing into a soda straw with
the wrapper still on it. See the picture below, it makes way more sense.
So you start with the most basic design, which is just a tube, and the kids
engineer it from there. Add tail fins, weight, use different types of
paper – the sky’s the limit! I have three stomp rocket launchers built,
though it’s best if you bring your own soda bottles. The bottles do wear
out after enough stomps. The kids can measure either how far the rocket
flew to gauge its success. So this kinda teaches forces, but it’s really
an awesome way to teach data collection, independent variables, and testing one
variable at a time.
A word about that – methodically changing one variable at a
time is NOT a natural process for most kids. It must be taught.
Don’t be afraid to go through this activity 2 or 3 times, really taking the
time to talk about variables. It’s complex! Take the time it deserves.
P.S. – any grade level can do this, not just 3rd. Just let me
know, and we’ll make it happen! It’s a blast.
Fourth Grade Ideas: Here’s
an indicator from all the water cycle stuff: “Describe how
the water cycle relates to the water supply in your community. “ I just received a few cool
maps from the Public Utility Department at the city here – one of them shows
our watershed, and I’ve attached it to this email. A few things to notice
about this map: which direction is the water flowing? Look at the
elevation numbers – what do those tell us about where water is going?
Does the Jordan River flow North, or South? How do you know? What
do you think the dotted lines mean when the rivers hit the urban environments?
Like any map, or good data set, there are so many questions you can ask, and so
many things you can learn with your kids by examining it. If you like
this one, I have access to more. Just let me know.
This
is a random picture a watershed. What you want is the attached file of
the actual map I talked about above.
Fifth Grade Ideas: Still
working with heredity. Here’s a lesson from UEN that covers many
indicators within the heredity standard:
http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview?LPid=2713
It’s all about mealworms and earthworms, which are delightful little
creatures! Let me know if you need any assistance getting your hands on
some. Sometimes the hardest part can be just getting out to the store to
get a simple thing. It’s as easy as “Hey Kevin, can you get me some worms
for next week?” I’m better than Amazon Prime. Just let me know.
Sixth Grade Ideas:
Here’s a little one for you: in trying to distinguish radiation from conduction
and convection, show the kids that we can bounce radiation off a mirror. Check
out a heater like this:
http://www.murdochs.com/shop/comfort-zone-oscillating-parabolic-dish-radiant-heater/
The heating element is in the center, and the radiation bounces off the
parabolic mirror dish in the back, thus spreading it out to the area we’re
trying to heat. If I had one to loan, that would be 1,000 times better,
but we can still learn something from thinking about it. That will help
them understand that conduction and convection are when the molecules bump into
each other, but radiation is a totally different mechanism.
Think
you could get a tan from this thing?