Fantastic Florals

My Beautiful Geranium

Today we dissected flowers and identified each part.  It was so amazing to see how intricate and unique each flower was!  The room was filled with a wonderful aroma as each flower was explored and examined.  It makes me realize how beautiful and precise our planet is.  Every part of every plant and animal have a specific purpose and reason.  The world is full of beautiful things to explore.  There is no excuse for boring science classes.  The world is bursting with fascinating science topics and it is our job to bring them into the classroom.

Crime Lab

Everything you need to catch your criminal fits right into this box!

The crime scene

Our crime lab involved police tape, fingerprints, a gun, and the best detective on the force!  We were so lucky to learn about forensic science today.  What a fun way to introduce a science unit!  Who doesn't like a good mystery and investigation now and then?  Once again science and technology worked together to create a great science lesson.  Not only do student learn about DNA and how science is used to catch criminals, but they also learn how technology can be used to help police officers track bad guys!  It was an exciting and educational day.  I learned that once I get to know my students and find out their personal interests I can customize lessons to spark their interests.  I can visualize a future science class of mine where students are incorporating science and technology to conduct an investigation and solve a "crime"! 

Race Car

We had about 25 minutes to construct a race car out of wood sticks, wood wheels, rubber bands, cardboard, binder clips, and tape.  We decided to construct a three wheeled race car and wanted to weigh the front down to increase it's speed.  We had to increase the size of our back wheels so we cut circles out of cardboard.  We were excited to test out our car's speed in a race down a hill!  Our car proved to be fast, however due to the single wheel in front it did not have the steering ability to go in a straight line causing our car to veer to the left or right and right out of the race!  Oh well!  We had fun anyways.  Better luck next time!

Science Experiments

Today we conducted research for our science experiment.  We took ideas from class today and brainstormed for our experiment.  The experiment in class was combining a mixture of CaCl and Baking soda with Phenol Red.  When the phenol red is added to the CaCl and baking soda is becomes gaseous and hot.  Since we conducted the experiment in a plastic bag the bag filled with air and we thought it might explode.  It was so exciting to watch the reaction take place and we were thrilled to see how hot it became.  For our science experiment we are going to add carbox dioxide to phenol red and it will change color from red to yellow.  I hope the students will like it!

My Rainforest Animal-Caria Mantinea

I chose the Caria Mantinea because of it's beautiful colors!  This butterfly shimmers bright green and has the most vibrant colors I have ever seen in a butterfly.  It is a relatively common butterfly in the Amazon but is hard to follow in flight because of it's unique color.  It seems to shimmer in the air.  I am going to decorate my butterfly with green glitter to try to replicate the shimmer!  :) 

Isn't our rain forest wall magnificent?

Over 150 people contributed to make our wall fantastic!  We were all so proud of the final project!

Arboretum trip

Our trip to the Arboretum was so much fun and I learned a lot!  I kept thinking about how fun it would be to take your class on a field-trip their and have them explore.  I could have spent a lot more time there and I was trying to think of activities for a class depending on the amount of time for the field trip.  I was thinking that I could give the class a certain amount of time to explore but then assign each group to a certain ecosystem for a deeper exploration.  There are so many possibilities that could work for all grade levels.  I loved looking at the different types of plants anf flowers at each ecosystem.  We noticed the smell in Wetlands and the beautiful cactus in the Desert.  Each ecosystem was beautiful in it's own unique way and it really made me appreciate each unique quality. 

Tree Podcast

We learned how to create science podcasts!  We had so much fun taking pictures and creating a podcast with those pictures.  This picture was taken with a microscope and is a pine needle.  I am very proud of the results!