Life Cycles

OK, so I am posting this a week after school is out, but better late than never.  Our last unit in Science is Life Cycles.  Our job is to compare and contrast various life cycles.  So, we set up stations and rotated through the life cycles of various plants and organisms; butterfly, frog, flowers, tomato plant, and meal worms (very smelly).

MLA "Ecosystem"

We went out today to view our own class ecosystem.  We are blessed enough to have an awesome Outdoor Learning Area.  We categorized the Living and Non-living components of our Pond (lake) ecosystem.

Building Terrariums

We are studying ecosystems right now, and how living and non living components work together within a given habitat.  We build a terrarium and will observe how our seeds grow.

Soil's Ability to Retain Water

We are continuing on our quest to learn all the properties of soil.  Today we tested a soil's ability to retain water.  We put soil samples in 4 different beakers using knee highs to hold the soil.  We added 200mL of water and then waited one minute.  We lifted the sample and read the amount of water remaining in the water.  Then, we had to do math in SCIENCE.

Soil Texture

We are beginning our unit on Soil.  We will be exploring types of soil in various ways.  Today we explored soil texture.  It was real educational and messy! 

Building Circuits

The students were given plastic covered wire (conductor and insulator), battery, and several different objects.  They had to successfully build a complete circuit.  They had to know to ask the teacher to cut their wire to expose the conductor.  The circuit wouldn't work if the plastic was touching because it is an insulator.  They had a lot of fun, lighting up the room, buzzing sound energy and watching the battery heat up the thermometer.  Some of them even figured out how to expand their circuit to test more than one form of energy.

Testing Forces

The students had the task of designing a plan to test all 5 types of forces; push, pull, gravity, magnetism, and friction.  They were able to choose from a variety of materials.  They were responsible for designing the plan, testing the forces, and recording their data.  The students did awesome!

Solutions

Okay, sorry it has been a while since I updated our exciting science experiments.  We created solutions.  First we determined that solutions dissolve much faster in hot water instead of cold water.  Then we tested a race to dissolve.  Which dissolves faster: sugar cube or granual?  Well, the granuals won.  The definition to solution is a mixture that can not easily be separated.  So, we tested that as well!  Can sugar and water be separated after it has been mixed together?  The result was YES!  We evaporated all the water and the sugar started to cook on the bottom of the beaker.  It was pretty cool!

Which will float?

Today we completed our final mixture; woodchips, pebbles, and water.  We predicted which solid would float and then combined our mixture.  We stirred it up and allowed it to settle. Then we observed at eye level to determine which solid would sink and which would float.  The pebbles are more dense than the water, so they sank.  The woodchips were less dense, so they float.  We got our hands wet separating the mixture back to its original form. 

Separating Mixtures

We used all different tools to separate mixutres; our hands, sifter, tweezers, and even a spoon.  A mixture is two or more types of matter combined that can be easily separated.

Hot vs Cold

We observed the difference between adding color drops to a beaker full of hot water and a beaker full of cold water.  We also measured in Celcius and observed the condensation on the outside of the cold water beaker.