The biggest discussion topic was the moon, and why it appears light to us, and why it has phases. I claimed that the sun's light bounces off the moon to us, which was received fairly well, although there was a determined minority opinion that the moon was lighting the sun. I didn't specifically disagree with this, because it could be a syntax issue (somebody who really meant to say the moon Is Lit By The, but the words come out as the moon Lights Up The. English is a very tricky language). I did draw a nice big diagram with rays of light zooming all over space. Astute helpers insisted I also add the lightness and darkness on earth.
Somebody interjected a question about asteroids, which I thought was going to give us an elegant segue to How Did Dinosaurs Become Extinct which has been languishing unanswered in the question box due to lack of time. The segue was not to be, because everybody had $0.02 to chip in about the moon, its movement, and light. It was a shock to realize we had run out the clock when we were all having so much fun. I know in show biz you're supposed to leave 'em wanting more, but this was more like "I can't stop the express train". We even had one very upset student who felt he just couldn't go home without getting his chance to comment. Fortunately, we're talking Primavera here, not Just Any School. His Guide managed to find me after Silver Surfer class so we could have a little Science Supplemental. To us big people, it's just one additional minute off the clock - - say hello, listen as the child expresses his way of visualizing the sun and moon. To the child: it is the difference between squelch ("Science Guy has gone for the day. Fuhgeddaboudit") and respect ("I can see this is important to you. I'll go get him").
In Silver Surfer I hoped to continue the winning streak with You Can Model Anything With Styrofoam Balls. But, alas, we were sunk by what I call non-point-source noise pollution. You've heard of non-point-source water pollution, where the bit of antifreeze on your driveway mixes with a bit of diazinon from your neighbor's lawn, and a camera battery that your other neighbor's F10 ran over, and the collective effect is some truly nasty runoff water in the creek despite the lack of a single major polluter. Sometimes in class each of us has just one teeny little harmless sentence to murmur to our pal, not enough to really disrupt anything, just a clever insight, or something so funny it couldn't wait - - and the collective effect of ten of these is an impenetrable wall of sound. Well, it happened, and unfortunately we lost so much time that the demo got killed by the clock. Ouch. I guess we should start with it next session.
I heard that quite a number of students did their Temperature Measuring worksheets. I'll have to catch them in one-on-one sidebar time and see their results.
I offered the Mushroom Challenge. Our classroom has a new field guide to the fungi. I brought in photos of a mushroom I found,
and photos of one that a student found last year. The challenge is to find the names of these mushrooms in the field guide. I think the 6-8 age range is when we just start getting into this frame of mind where we enjoy examining (and mentally cataloging) every single page of a reference-type text. Next week I get to find out who succeeded.
New library books: one on brains/nerves, and one about germs and plagues.
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