Inspired
by one of my college professors who assigned each student a week to present an
experiment... my second graders do a “Super Scientist” of
the week (sometimes two). I made up a
couple of bags with science experiment cards, a couple of science books, a variety
of different science type tools…like eye droppers, collecting cylinder, etc. I
tied on a pair of goggles with a ribbon.
Inside the bag is a brief letter describing that the student can
practice any experiment at home and then when they are ready they can present
an experiment to the class. I also
included pictures of scientists from last year to inspire my students.
Pictured
here is one of my students this week conducting the experiment all while
calling on volunteers, asking her peers scientific questions and asking for
predictions. So many good things happen
while students present their experiments!
This week we started “Digging In” to our Plant
unit. I am excited to start
incorporating inquiry based experiments into our learning. I purchased this book on TPT:
The students have really enjoyed the experiments this
week. We have several going on. We are testing: Do Plants Need Light? and
Do Plants Need Water? from this book.
We experimented with sand and soil to determine
which material would be better for plants. This experiment was also in this book. The second graders had such great ideas on why the water went right
through the sand and why the soil absorbed the water. We pretended we were plants and decided we
wanted to be in the soil. We also did the super stem experiment with food coloring and celery.
We are doing the seed sprout activity to observe different germination times.
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| This was made and presented by a couple of students. |
Our culminating event for our plant unit will be a salad party where we harvest the lettuce, wash it, and then set up a salad bar in our room and eat the delicious salad!
Our school has a children's garden where we will be planting lettuce and other items for a salad garden.
We will eventually have a Salad Party where we harvest the lettuce, wash it, and then set up a salad bar in our room and eat the delicious salad!
I found this super cool Mushroom Mini Farm so we completed this farm and we are ready for the mushrooms to start growing!!
I enjoy making collages in word to email parents and to incorporate in to student's learning. I used one of the collages from one of the experiments for students to write about what they learned about.
