More Chocolate

This week it was 3c's turn to compare chocolates. In this lesson we discussed states of matter and melting. We tasted white, milk and dark chocolates. The students made a hypothesis about which one would melt first. One skill we practiced in this unit was safely using a small burner to melt the chocolate. 

Making Toxic Gas!!!!

We are continuing with chemical changes in grade 4. Almost everyone has mixed vinegar and baking soda at some time in their lives. We focused on that reaction this week. I told the students that we should hold our breath because we were making a toxic gas. Don't worry, we breathed easily after the reaction. We just made some Carbon dioxide. Next week we will talk more about that gas and how it really only is dangerous when it pushes all the oxygen away. We use it in fire extinguishers to deprive fires of oxygen. It was also blamed for this tragedy. Look for evidence of chemical changes in these pictures: bubbles, color changes etc.

How big are we?

In grade 6, one of our inquiry questions in our space unit is: What models are appropriate to show how the planets behave? I really enjoy considering the size of our solar system and doing some activities with kids to illustrate this. We are lucky to live in Sweden where a group of people have created a scale model of the solar system using Globen. It's fun to travel to some of the closer planets around Stockholm. 

We had a lovely fall day where we used planet models to get in the right order. We were able to talk about the strength and weakness of different models. These planets on sticks were fun to wave around but they were flat and not at all to scale. 

We went on a little walk where we made the sun the size of a basketball. Only the first four planets would fit in the confines of the church yard in that case. 

We watched a film about the scale of the solar system: 

We reflected on what was in between all the planets...space.

From Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

The Greatest Botanist on Mars or in Room 32 at Least

This weekend I saw The Martian. My whole family enjoyed it. My boys are 8 and 10 and they found it interesting and exciting. It comes with a PG-13 or från 11 rating for some language and one pretty graphic scene of a wound but the overall message and spirit of the film was family friendly in my opinion. It is about an astronaut who gets stuck on Mars. In one scene he decides to grow potatoes. In addition to claiming that he is the best botanist on Mars, he claims that, “Mars will come to fear my botany powers!”

We might be starting on a much smaller scale trying to germinate seeds in grade 5 but every botanist starts somewhere. Grade 5 students are germinating seeds in petri dishes. They have chosen their conditions for growing. Of course they have only changed one factor in order to make a fair test. 

Some of the varying conditions are: growing in soap, growing in tea or coffee, growing in different colors among others. Who knows, maybe one of these kids will be the best botanist on Mars  one day. 

Chemical Reactions grade 4

The grade 4 students were chemistry detectives this week. We are continuing to talk about chemical reactions. The students were given four white powders and 4 liquids. They had to mix each liquid with each powder and record and changes. Then they were given a "mystery powder" and they had to use the test to figure out what it was. We practiced a lot of skills including careful pouring and mixing, clear recording and problem solving. Our learning goal is: 2.29 Know about the changes that occur when materials are mixed.

Nobel Prize Announcements

We watched a live streaming of the announcement of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics in grade 6 today. The prize was awarded to a Japanese scientist, Takaaki Kajita and a Canadian, Arthur  B. McDonald. They discovered that neutrinos can transform and therefor have mass. You can read more about this on http://www.nobelprize.org/. They will be live streaming other prizes this week. The leaureates will come to Sweden on December 10 to receive their prizes

Chocolate

Grade 3 is testing and comparing chocolates. At the same time we are learning about properties of solids, liquids and gases. We will continue to look at melting and the temperatures at which different substances melt. As you can imagine the kids love these chocolate lessons.