Pine cones, and Science Specialist goes YouTube

 There were so many demonstrations and artifacts to share last week, that we never got to the Question Box. I knew I owed the class some Question Box time, and you can bet they knew it too. We dove right into it without any preliminaries. The first question in the box was about pine cones. Actually it was a pine cone. In the box. Not a written question. An actual pine cone. I think our young cognitive scientists enjoyed the play on symbology::reality. They were off like a hurricane, asking about seeds and seed-eaters and sap and edible versus poisonous and geometry and developmental genetics. Dang if them kids didn't spend twenty minutes asking questions about a pine cone! Your average professor teaching a college seminar would count herself lucky indeed to find students so involved and thoughtful.
This week's demonstration involved baking soda and vinegar. Parental note: mixing baking soda and vinegar is a lot of fun, and may save you on one of those awful cabin-bound rainy days.
Now, those bubbles you get from baking soda and vinegar are carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide will suffocate a fire, which was demonstrated by use of a candle. Join the class by watching the demo here (hosted by YouTube).


Welcome to the classroom. And thank you for the privilege of spending time with your crop of affable young geniuses.

Pretty Exciting Week

This week's new specimens-for-the-microscope:
1. A snippet of cedar with the little pollen-releasing niblets on it, for the stereoscope
2. Some actual pollen grains shaken onto a slide, for the compound microscope

It's like Professor Eisner said - - the stereoscope is a more fascinating instrument. The bit of cedar has all sorts of shapes and crevices, and if you look closely you can see a few thousand teeny pollen bits just getting ready to fall. The pollen-on-a-slide, cranked up to 400x, just looks like a bunch of circles.


Last week's chromatography practice worked out well:

as you can see newspaper works better than computer printer paper. Still, both of them yielded some pretty good separation:






Important facts about chromatography
1. It's what they use in all those DNA tests you see in the news
2. It's a lot of fun at home



I got these great molecules on eBay, and they are now available in the classroom:





I took the liberty of doing a Molecular Models Focus Group at home before the class, and I learned:
1. Six-year-old fingers have enough strength to build with these,
2. Six-year-olds can totally grok what this set is about.

What became clear in class is:
3. These things have INCREDIBLE "touch me now" appeal.

As a demo I built a propane molecule and, wouldn't you know it, I just happened to have a BernzOmatic handy just in case somebody didn't know what propane is. The flame, of course, caused a wave of excitement; although the sparks from the traditional hand striker were perhaps even more popular. I hope everybody remembered the molecules part after all the uproar.


There was also a lot of fuss about the camera I brought, so I ended up taking a few group pictures. I don't want to post pictures of your kids on the web, so contact me privately for copies.
 
Thanks to the kids for bringing in all their questions and a scorpion and a magnificent huge conch shell and a really good chert (Texas Agate) sample. I totally missed the great synchronicity between the chert (AKA flint) and the striker above. Oops.

Thanks to the grownups for letting me spend time with their delightful-beyond-belief children.

(Meta: Change in blogging software)

It looks like Google bought Blogspot, so they have, ahem, upgraded the software that manages this site. I hope it still works.
They announce that it is "bursting with features", showing they haven't read any books about good design, and therefore still haven't caught on to the fact that people are sick and tired of features, and would prefer things that work and are intelligible. Is your VCR still blinking "12:00" ? Yeah. 

Chromatography and Sandpaper

We did an exercise in chromatography. I will try to bring you pictures next session.

I brought in some sandpaper samples for microscoping. Here is what they look like (60,120,400, and 1000 grit - - click the thumbnails for the actual photo).

I also brought in this fascinating discovery but got so caught up in everything else that I forgot to show it to the class. It'll be brought in on 17 January. You can see the way it will be in a tray introducing the vocabulary of observation and inference.

Lead Balloon

Suppose you built a scale model of a hydrogen atom. Use an ordinary child's toy marble to represent the one proton. Ignore those pesky quantum problems and use another slightly larger marble to represent the electron. If you place the proton in the Primavera K-1 classroom, then the (approximate) position of the (sort of) orbiting electron is somewhere near the Capitol building.



The rest is emptiness.



This fact does not astonish the K-1 class. You could say it went over like a lead balloon. What's interesting here is, the startling scale model of the solar system also got a blasé reception. This must point to an underlying principle of children's intellectual development: what things they take in stride at a given age, what they are amazed by, what they want to know, what they don't care about in the least.


They love How Do You Make, and Origins Of Things.

How do you make Lego people? (I think we need to do some sort of casting. Although at least one of you has some sort of action-figure-casting kit at home apparently, and our Art Specialist lay some claim to this territory). Who was the first person on earth? (Don't pester me with the subtleties of population genetics: I just enjoy asking).
And, elegantly mixing Invention and Origin, How Was English Invented? I don't know if linguistics is on the official curriculum: I guess it is now. As is William of Normandy.

Photo album online

I've put some of my nature photos online.  Yall enjoy.
 
http://picasaweb.google.com/ScienceSpecialist
 
 

As long as I'm missing this week,

I might as well take a moment to mention those other parent subject-specialist teachers.



I love that my daughter comes home talking about Salvador Dali's mustache.

I love that she sings Ram Sam Sam (slow, fast, crescendo, decrescendo), and keeps saying "Daddy, let's do Call and Response singing now".

Yes, I love teaching science. Also, music and arts are core passions in my existence. And our parent specialists are supporting them wonderfully.



Thank you, L. and A.



 

Alas, no class

I had to miss class in order to take my child to the doctor. Fortunately the strep culture came up negative. 
It gets worse: next week I have to miss class because I'll be travelling on business. 
It gets worse: the week after that (Thanksgiving) there is no school Wednesday afternoon.
 
I don't think I can stand three weeks without science kids. Maybe I can sneak in on Monday or Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. 

A fine state

Another week with Live Demonstrations. The topic was States of Matter (cued by the intersection of one child's question [on clouds] with the standard Montessori elementary curriculum.

We had water present in its three states, and changing from one to the other.

I explained that water vapor (gas) is completely invisible, and clouds are made of liquid water (or sometimes ice). I'm still annoyed that my 3rd grade class did not make that clear, leaving me at the time mumbling that something was fishy in their story. (Annoyingly, some English usage allows the word "water vapor" as a synonym for steam, which is – like clouds –liquid water. I did not muddle up the works by mentioning this little gem of ambiguity).

I brought a little mist sprayer such as you would use to moisten your houseplant foliage, and we watched the atomized cloudlike droplets, which evaporated right before our wondering eyes: "And now there is a whole bunch of water vapor right here. Between you and me. Do you see it? No? That's right".

Then we extended it to Other Things Also Have States Of Matter. I liquefied some candle wax and then melted some lead-free solder. As it turns out a lot of people were surprised to learn that metal can turn to liquid.

My handy soldering torch cannot liquefy rock (we tried), but after a moment's hesitation everybody was able to say where on earth one might find liquid rock. It gives you pause: every drop of lava is significantly hotter than the blue flame coming out of this thing.
. Yowch.



 

What? Re-runs?

Yes, it's a re-run, but bear with me - - there's a plan. Everybody built (again) a molecular model of water. They all enjoyed the exact same exercise last spring, and they enjoyed it again. But the reason for bringing a rerun into our programming is that there's a whole lot we can get into about atoms and molecules, and this makes a perfect entry point. Really, the fact that I got a huge box of styro balls at a good price on eBay has nothing to do with it.

I also received in the Question Box a lovely set-up question about how clouds form. There is a whole lot in the Official Montessori Curriculum about states of matter and the water cycle, so this student has given us the opportunity to get into all that. Water – solid liquid gas – molecules – crystals -

And yes, the water molecule is shaped like Mickey Mouse.

It's intriguing how they completely get it and completely don't get it at the same time. The same child will give me signals that he knows exactly what I mean, and then more signals that he hasn't quite registered that this is anything other than a styro Mickey Mouse.
The tough concepts:
- what a scale model is
- how totally tiny a real atom is
Actually, I think most adults don’t get how tiny a real atom is. We can all work it out on paper, but it is difficult to impossible to really grasp it in the imagination, to visualize or feel it. There are about 602300000000000000000000 of these things in a teaspoonful of water. Really. Envision that number. Let me know when you've succeeded, because I can't do it.

Understated

It was a quiet session last week. The fact that 40% of the class was out sick may have had something to do with it. Q&A (or I guess I should say Q&Q) continued, again with a slant toward the puzzling, the deeply mysterious, the unanswerable.

This week's library books: a book on early man: text too thick for K-1, but with good pix of homo habilis and australopithecus, skulls and artist's renderings of entire animal; also, two octopus books.

[Name omitted for internet privacy] found an unripe pomegranate, which led to the idea of seed dispersion.

With both the Older Group and the Younger, we ended with my asking them: what did you see or discover last week? Just by observing around you? I'm curious to see if this will resonate with them, or just submerge in the kidly consciousness.

For that matter I'm curious which parts of this-all are sticking with which children. I don't intend to give a final exam to find out, and I can't do what I'd like which is spend the entire day with each child discovering everything about them and their learning. I do appreciate the clues yall have been giving me when we meet at dropoff and pickup.

The taxonomic tree is definitely getting overcluttered. Its soon-to-be-made replacement will have to be very carefully planned. Then we can maybe bring in pictures (or bones, shells, feathers, twigs) to glue onto the appropriate spots.

Even though the viruses that the children are carrying around are rather interesting little things, here's hoping that they (the children) kill them all (the viruses) and come in to school without them. Besides, we don't have a handy electron microscope to look at them (the viruses) with.

Question mania

Your childrens' questions are guiding us right into all the key material. Energy, light, evolution, physiology, taxonomy.
Some of them got so intensely committed to writing down questions for me that they marched right out of science circle to go write more questions in their private workspaces. At one point this mind virus spread until half the class was busily scribing away. Circle was getting lonely.

My uncle Robby says that just asking the question is a significant learning experience, whether or not they stick around for an answer. One child proudly brought me her freshly written question card. I read it out loud, was ready to talk about it - - but she had gone back to her table. She was obviously pleased I had received the card, and as far as she was concerned that closed the subject!



One more note about the solar system demo the previous week. I left the eight scale models of the planets (yeah, we're down to eight planets nowadays) on the science shelf. Here's earth, Mars, and Neptune (click to enlarge).





Corn kernels, pinheads, acorns - - these remain in the classroom. And the sun? Hmm.
Right after class, during cleanup-and-organize, I looked at the enormous, bright,oh-so-bouncy ball representing the sun. I looked at 20 very playful kids. I looked at Deborah.
I said: I don't think you want me to leave this Sun here, do you.
She, firmly: No. I don't.
Nuff said?

Flashy demos

We took some time out from the 'questions' format because I had some demonstrations I just had to share.
We modelled the solar system to scale. Well, mostly. We could not fit all the planets on premises. With the sun represented by a basketball, and Mercury a pinhead, we started measuring off how far away everything orbited. Our solar system began with the sun (in the classroom). At this scale, the earth (represented by an unpopped popcorn kernel) lands near the garden, and Mars is over the fence (Neptune is close to South 1st Street).

The rest of the solar system is empty space.

Also, due to [ name omitted for internet privacy ]'s question last week about crab gills, I brought in a live Dungeness crab from Central Market. My goodness: I didn't realize how loud some of the girls can scream. In the end everybody was willing to take a close look at the animal, and count its legs.

It has come to my attention that some of your children are arriving at class with a better preparation in general sciences than many college sophomores.
You know who you are.
Keep it up. I'll keep running, to remain a step ahead as long as possible.

Mold followup

The mold finished eating all the sour cream and died, leaving behind a million spores. Here are a few (visible right now in Primavera classroom). This is with the microscope at 400x. The second pic gives an idea of the immense quantity of spores (we're looking at one teeny spot of one teeny smudge taken from that huge mass of mold).

What, more whales?

science blog 13 September


These amazing children just keep asking original and deep questions (are any of us surprised by this?). I thought at least one of the topics - - pigment color as selective absorption of light - - was way tough for this age, but a some hours later a child basically re-explained the whole topic back to me using examples in the local environment.

Dolphins joined whales in the hit parade of topics. Three library books about whales are now on the classroom shelves pro tem.

The younger group decided on unanimous voice vote to spend science class in reading aloud. I read one of the whale books to them. Considering end-of-day fatigue, the fact that reading aloud is just plain fun (and very educational), and the excitement this group shows at the very sight of a fresh new book, this may become our modus operandi for some weeks.

The delightful blue mold from my fridgie is now on exhibit in the class microscope. It has also allowed us to add a third kingdom to our taxonomic tree.




Hmmm.. . kind of hard to make out . . . I think I'll make up a slide for the compound microscope.

No class; shrike

Alas, no science class yesterday as I was off travelling for work.

At least I can offer you this nice picture of a shrike in my backyard.

Fascinating article about early earth history

The earth would be a frozen snowball if not for those cute little archaebacteria . . .
Click

Old and young

We tried a different organizational approach where we had two science sessions, each with fewer children, instead of one session with the whole class. This felt like a big improvement. The younger group really had a dramatically different style of giving and receiving messages (messages including speaking, moving, acting. drawing) and it was nice to be able to use the right style with each group and not have anyone left out in the cold. Thanks to Amber and Deborah for their support, occupying the other half of the class.
The older ones got into an avid discussion on the flight of birds. I diagrammed the wing countour that is used both by birds and jet aircraft to take advantage of the Bernoulli effect. If you hear them telling you that the wing position of the vulture is a V for vulture, now you know where it comes from.
Whales continue to be a hot topic.
I brought in some library books, two on mammals in general and two on armadillos. These will be in the classroom for a few weeks. I can see we'll need whale books.

The younger ones were all over the mammal books like ants on a candy bar. We walked on our wrists the way anteaters walk. There was more about birds. I showed them how real chemists sniff noxious agents (such as vinegar).

Keep putting questions in the question box!

I'll be travelling next week. This means I cannot make it to Primavera for Wednesday science on the 20th. I hope I don't go into withdrawal.

How to post a comment

I've been hearing that it's confusing trying to post a comment the first time.

I tried it.

It's confusing.

Click here for some instructions and illustrations that should de-confuse it pretty well.

Pangolins Plus

We talked about Pangolins, Anteaters, Aardvarks.
The idea "they all have thin snouts and long sticky tongues to get at the ants for dinner" resonated well, but the idea "they are not closely related" seemed to be a little less exciting.
(The underlying concept is convergent evolution).
Anyway, we added them to the taxonomic tree and shared a number of pictures.



(Click on the thumbnails to expand).

We also had a live-action docudrama on how it was advantageous to be tall if you are leafy; then added peach trees to the taxonomic tree.