Super Structures Groups Compete!

Mystery Canisters and the Sunday Search

Remember the days of 35 MM film? And those film canisters that the film came in?

Well, there are many fun labs that one can do with these canisters. (read: labs that could be done with other materials too, but the canisters are FREE, and teachers LOVE free)

Anyway, I am doing a mystery canisters lab soon with my 6th grade crew, during which they have to design canisters that will sink, float, and "suspend" in water. I need a total of 35 canisters. Yesterday, I must have gone to 6 different Targets, Walgreens, and CVS pharmacies. They were very nice about allowing me to dig through their recycling, but all I came up with so far were 20 canisters!

Luckily, I started early. In a plea to get some from parents, I posted it on my homework website. Who knew these would be so hard to come by. I guess it makes sense given that so many now shoot digital....

Oy!

Gummi Bear Lab Day 2

Ewww! The kids noticed a huge increase in length, width, thickness, mass, and volume of their gummi bears. The one thing that decreased was the density of the bears. Discuss.

Gummi Bear Lab and Gummi Bear Wiki

The Gummi Bear lab is taking place tomorrow in 6th grade.  We are studying measurement, so we will be measuring the length, width, mass, volume, etc, of a gummi bear, thereafter submerging it in water overnight.  Now, you might not think that anything would change, but you are wrong!  I tried it in advance (as all good scientists do) and was amazed at the results.  Will def take pictures for you all to view.  

We will use the following materials:

--Black Forest brand gummi bears (best results....shhhh)

--Haribo brand gummi bears

--Black Forest brand gummi worms (ewwww!  these had CRAZY changes)

--Black Forest brand sour gummi worms (lack of results due to sugar coating)

One of the cool things about this lab is that there is an online wiki where we can submit our data.  So the kids will get to compare to results from around the world!  

Super Structures x Infinity

Today we attempted yet another version of the "Super Structures".  Each class that does this seems to get more and more innovative with it.  Here is a photo of a particularly cute super structure, as well as the Italian superkid with his glue gun.  

Egg Drop Interviews

Excavating Cookies

A little Friday lab for you to view. Super cute video!

High Five!!!!

Raft Rally

Today we created raft designs. Here are a couple fun pics from the lesson. I'm loving this new bunch!

Classroom is ready!

School starts tomorrow, and I have that anxious anticipation of any teacher just before the first day of school. I promised to post some photos of my room this year. The bulletin boards are empty for student work. Wish me luck!

Environmentalism, NPR, and Hedgehogs

A couple of years ago I heard this story on NPR one morning. I recall thinking it was amusing (namely because I envisioned a poor little hedgehog with it's snorgle lodged in a Mc Flurry container), and later shared the story with my students.

Today I was trolling around for lesson ideas, and got distracted by some hedgehog images. Seems that hedgehogs have somewhat of a thing for lodging their little snorgles in tubes of any sort.