Dear Parents,
Welcome back to a new year!
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| The Gingerbread Men were decorated authentically by the students in December, but they were not necessarily photogenic. |
Hopefully, they were delicious. I know students were thrilled by the gingerbread hunt on the last day and their excitement really launched me into the holiday season. I hope you all had a lovely Winter Break!
Last week was a transitional one, rehearsing many of the routines that may have been forgotten over the holidays. This week, we are back to business. Library will again be on Friday and Scholastic orders have just gone home.
Volcanoes are very popular in my classroom, so I thought they'd be a good topic to start us off for the new calendar year.
In December, students in the afternoon class began making volcanoes in the sand table just about every day. At first, they were just piles of sand, but they slowly got more detailed, including holes and a more conical shape. I brought in some books. I got requests for water to fill them, and dinosaurs to destroy with lava.
So, then, over the holidays, I bought a volcano kit.
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| We had to mix the papier mache paste |
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| Then, pat it carefully into place and paint it. |
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| We mixed baking soda with red food colouring and carefully added vinegar |
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| The results were impressive |
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| Many students journaled about volcanoes and read the books that I had placed in our science centre, over and over. |
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| Everyone got a turn to be part of the experiment |
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| Some students created new experiments. |
After mixing the baking soda and vinegar in the volcano, I gave students the cups with the baking soda to devise further experiments. Some mixed the remaining baking soda to get more bubbles, some blew on the foam to see how they could alter the lava flow.
And this morning, the AM class noticed the volcano...
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| James and Blake looked at a volcano book to make sure they got the crater right for their sand table volcano. |
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| Jahlisa's play doh volcano has sparkly beads to show lava flow. |
So, I took out the baking soda and vinegar again.
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| The lava didn't seem to want to fall, at first. |
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| But then they really liked the mess. |
Afterwards, our Reading Buddies came.
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| Reading Buddies helped explain how volcanoes work |
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| ...though the morning students are also very interested in dinosaurs. |
I hope this investigation continues. I am beginning to use this interest to foster experiments with baking soda and vinegar, which I hope will lead us into pH. At the same time, students seem very interested in Dinosaurs and exploring more about how fossils came about, so there's a lot to build towards.
I hope your January is flowing smoothly.
