Kindergarten – “Compare and contrast young plants and animals with their
parents.” This one’s pretty straight forward – babies and
adults. Lots to do here, especially with the baby animals that don’t look
like their parents – such as frogs, caterpillars, etc. If you want to go
the inquiry route, you could have the kids research what a baby animal looks
like, what the adults look like, and compare and contrast them. They
could learn if the babies are oviparous or viviparous, if their mothers stay
with them, etc.
First Grade – “Indicator 1. Observe and
record how objects move in different ways, e.g., fast, slow, zigzag, round and
round, up and down, straight line, back and forth, slide, roll, bounce, spin,
swing, float, and glide.” This is a great time of year for sink or
float. This is actually a rich and fascinating topic with much more complexity
than we usually give it credit for. Look here for some discussion, framed
around common misconceptions: https://www.ied.edu.hk/apfslt/v6_issue1/costu/costu5.htm
Second Grade – With another storm possibly moving through
this weekend, it’s a great time to wrap up weather. Do some more outside
observations of temperature, etc. Here’s one of our indicators: “Analyze and interpret data such as temperatures in different
locations and different times. “ Take
a look at this climograph:
It’s a little dense for second graders, but you can find
some trends together. Start simple – which months are hottest, and which
are coldest? Just for fun, does precipitation seem related to
temperature? Look at the image below. What can we see about
temperature differences across the state? Why do you think we get that
“finger” of cooler weather that goes diagonally down across the state?
I’ll write the answer here backwards: (Sniatnuom eht!)
Third Grade – A little more gravity. Examine the fact that a
ball rolled off a table and a ball dropped from the same height will hit the
floor at the exact same time. This is counter intuitive for the kids –
they’ll think the ball with sideways motion would take longer to hit the floor,
because it’s… moving. But the sideways motion has no effect whatsoever on
the speed at which it falls.
Another example would be to “shoot” a rubber band off your
finger, and drop one at the same time. Which one lands first? It’s
a tie! Or shoot a nerf dart exactly level, and drop a nerf dart from the
same height at the same time. It’s a little tricky to get your data, but
they should hit at exactly the same time.
You can now shoot that nerf dart straight up in the
air. Maybe in the gym. Look at the fact that it was fighting
gravity for its whole flight up. If it had enough force, and could push
itself far enough away from the Earth, eventually the force of gravity would
lessen as the distance increased. This is how a rocket can break free of
Earth’s gravity – it takes a lot of force to get up there!
One other mind blower about gravity – every particle of
matter has a gravitational pull. So while the Earth is pulling on us,
we’re all pulling back on the Earth. The pull is proportional to our
mass, so as you can imagine, it’s infinitesimal. But the moon pulls on
Earth too, with a force that’s not infinitesimal. That pull is partially
responsible for the tides, for example. But there’s nothing special about
a planet that gives it gravity. Every single thing in the universe has a
gravitational pull. It just doesn’t add up to much, unless it’s a pretty
massive body. And really massive things have much more gravity, like a
star.
Fourth Grade – I’m going to point you to an incredibly
useful pool of resources from the SETS PD coordinated by my esteemed colleague,
Candace Penrod. I won’t pretend to be able to communicate everything
about their effectiveness in a short email, but start exploring and see what’s
there. I’ll draw your attention to one piece at a time to start sorting
through, and this week, it’s the geologic time powerpoint. Find it here:
Here’s the link to the rest of it: http://www.slcschools.org/departments/curriculum/science/SETSPD.php#.VpUhZ3bnsgt
As you can see, fifth grade is already starting to
accumulate info for their upcoming cohort.
Fifth Grade – Changes in matter! This unit is great
fun, and there’s a lot here. Let’s bite off this little piece, which is
Objective 1: “Describe that matter is neither created nor
destroyed even though it may undergo change.” Talk about profound truths
of science. Let me know if you need to borrow little digital scales to
play with this idea. There are so many ways to do it – dissolve a little
salt in water, watch it disappear, but notice that the mass is still
there. Go grab a bowl of snow, (cover with plastic wrap so you don’t lose
any to evaporation) and watch the mass stay exactly the same as it melts.
Drop half an alka-seltzer tablet in a tiny water bottle with a bit of water
inside, and watching the mass drop as it dissolves and the gas escapes.
Then do it again, and capture the gas with a balloon. No drop in
mass. Do a few simple ones like weighing 5-6 lego blocks, then snapping
them together and seeing that it’s the same mass. Take them apart, weigh
them again, still the same. Talk about a few examples where it looks like
matter is destroyed, like burning a birthday candle. Pretty much all those
examples have the matter escaping as a gas. There you have it –
conservation of matter.
Sixth Grade – If you need one more piece to wrap up your
solar system unit, check this out. This one is from Kearney District in
Missouri, though I’ve seen many like it. It’s a simulation where the kids
create a travel brochure for a planet in our solar system, and gather a lot of
knowledge to do so. See this link:
They’ll need lots of information like its distance from the
sun, atmosphere, etc. It’s a fun way to get them engaged.
That’s it for this week! Science on.
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