Science Experimenting....Contains Spoilers!

All experiences come in handy at some point or another.  While in high school, I briefly worked at TCBY (a frozen yogurt/ice cream shop).  Sometimes we would find out really interesting things...like what happens when you put candy in a cup of water.  You don't want to know what we found out about the Rainbow Cream flavor.  Anyway one of the things I learned is what happens to an M&M candy after about five minutes of being in a cup of water.  So do continue our learning about the Scientific Method, we used water and M&Ms. 

We started with our Scientific Process page.  Our question was, "What Happens When You Put an M&M in a glass of water?"  Next we created our hypothesis.  Most chickadees wrote "the color will come off," or "the M&M will melt."  We listed the materials we needed and the steps we would take to complete our experiment.

Then we started observing the changes.  First the color did come off and stayed at the bottom of the cup.  But then the real magic happened....not only does all the color come off and stay at the bottom....the M floats to the top of the water!

I wish I didn't have to blur their faces....the discovery of the floating m was priceless!  I knew it was going to happen, but not one kids hypothesized that and they were shocked.  So at the end of the day, half of them wanted to take home an extra paper, so they could make their parents perform the experiment.  AND wanted to retest to see if a Skittle would have the same results!  LOVE days like this!

Happy Tuesday,
Laurie

Lady Liberty

We have been living in Lady Liberty world this week.  Each day we read a little bit, from the book Lady Liberty.  Amazing illustrations and the pages switch between each of the people who had a part in dreaming, creating, financing, and building the famous statue.

We have also been viewing live Liberty cams.  This website is so fun.  Live cams from famous places all around the earth.  We have been viewing the ones from the Statue of Liberty. 

There are so many great units out there in the blogosphere!  U is for U.S.A. from www.oopseydaisyblog.com, America Math and Literacy Fun,  American Centers and More are three of the units we have been using for tons of fun.  As well as our GLAD units.

Here are the step by step directions, I had students follow:

Steps 1, 2, and 3

Steps 4,5, and 6.  Sorry about the orientation!

We used oil pastels and drew some step by step drawings of a close up view of Lady Liberty.  Thank you We Heart Art for the drawing help.  My kiddos said they looked like the Starbucks girl:-)

We also wanted to find out how the Statue of Liberty turned green, so we put pennies in vinegar and salt and left them to soak overnight.  LOVE the trays.  They are from IKEA and good for everything....painting, putting out group supplies...love love!

Unfortunately, the vinegar smell has taken over the classroom.

 Finally we measured the length of the Statue of Liberty's foot.  (25 feet!)  Then we predicted if our class, standing shoulder to shoulder, would be equal to, less than, or greater than the length of the foot.

Standing right next to it, to see how much space he was using.

All lined up, testing our predictions!

And recording our data and results.

And we learned Portlandia is the second largest free standing copper statue!  (Liberty the first, of course)  And to view it, it is just a 20 minute drive into Portland.

Happy Thursday,
Laurie