al-mofhariz

Do you teach static electricity ?  The kids love it and can truly relate to it.   I found some great youtube videos to share....                    This one shows rice krispies in a glass container. When the person rubs wool on top, the rice krispies jump up to the top due to the electric charge. I like it because it shows the attraction the particle have...it is easy to relate it to when you have static in your pants or when your hair stands up.  You can do an experiment in your classroom with balloons and paper scraps ( I like to use the circles from hole punches) to show the attraction at a station.   This short video clip shows how lightening is really a giant static shock.  The kids can relate to this clip because we have all seen lightening and we all see or feel sparks at time when the air is dry!

I just love to look at the clouds....laying on my back and staring overhead for hours at the shapes in the sky....One of my favorite books is It Looked Like Spilt Milk  .  This book take the imagination route of looking at white shapes and imagining they are a birthday cake, a tree, a bunny...but all in all they are just a cloud in the sky.  This book is a great hook at any age! With my Seeds of Science Weather and Water unit, we spend a lot of time looking at cloud cover and analyzing what type of precipitation they create.  We learn where these cloud form in the sky and how much humidity is involved in each one. But eventually, we need to learn the official names of the clouds for our Virginia SOLS.  So I created a matching game where the kids have to match the picture and name to the description of the cloud. You can download it for FREE in the Google Docs page. Also, one of my "fans" took the what do you wonder about weather and turned it into a PowerPoint....

Have I said lately how much I love Seeds of Science?   We have been exploring weather in our classroom using this module for weeks now.  One of my favorite investigations is exploring humidity.   We set up five stations with humidity strips to test for humidity in the air.  Humidity is the measure of water vapor and is a major indicator of precipitation and cloud coverage.  We place strips on the roof of a closed system with water in it... and with out water in the system.  If there is humidity in the air, the strips will turn pink or purple. Next, we put humidity strips on a tray and wave it with a cardboard fan.  A real fan works better, but I didn't have one available. We also put humidity strips on the closed system of a plastic bag - that the students breathe into.  Yes, water vapor from the students....cool! Our last investigation involves putting strips on a pencil that hangs over a cup of hot water that we have warmed in a kettle.  Th...

We are working on WEATHER!  This is one of my favorite units because I use a unit from Seeds of Science called "Weather and Water".  This unit is so super cool because it takes children on an adventure through weather using excellent books as well as great hands-on experiences.   I can't give away all the "secrets"... I can only showcase a few moments from my classroom... One thing we do during this unit is observe water as it evaporates in the classroom.  Such an easy experiment to do - just set it up and watch the water disappear! We also keep track of the daily weather on a class chart and in our science notebooks. Another cool thing...we keep track of the clouds by making sky observations... Real photos help the children key in on the weather terms so that we can not only learn the scientific names of the clouds, but the types of weather that they create. And of course, DON'T FORGET THE WORD WALL...pocket charts are awesome! This is just a peek into my c...