Protons and Neutrons and Electrons, Oh My!

Miss Nelson has been busy teaching my 6th graders about the chemical elements.  Today they learned about atoms.  To help with understanding the structure of an atom, they created models showing the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus and the number of electrons zooming around the outside.

Learning about Nutrition

Jolene Gansen from the Aitkin County Extension Office has been visiting our room to talk about nutrition. We have learned about the amount of fat and sugar in foods and how to try to make healthier choices.  The kids love when she comes, because she always brings food!  We have made smoothies, trail mix and homemade (healthier) pop.

Real Scientists

My fifth graders were real scientists today.  They used the fancy compound microscopes from the high school biology department to look at plant cells.  We started our microscope unit by learning the parts of the microscope and how to safely use it.  Today they took a leaf off an elodea plant and saw its cells close up.  It was cool to see the cell walls and chloroplasts, just like we have been discussing for the last 2 weeks.

Tomorrow they will take a cheek cell sample and look at their own cells.

Figuring Out Fractions

My student teacher, Miss Nelson, has been doing a fabulous job so far this year. We continue to work together to plan lessons and run the classroom.  Lately, she has been doing a lot of the planning on her own and I am continually impressed with her fabulous ideas. The point of student teaching is for her to learn from me, but I am feeling rejuvenated as she comes up with new ways do do things.

Here's an example.  Today's math lesson in our teacher's manual was pretty boring.  It had students looking at pictures and doing word problems relating to fractions - halves, fourths and tenths.  Carley took the lesson and turned it into centers.  The kids got to play "basketball" with the garbage can, do a fun game on the Smartboard and work with colorful fraction manipulatives.

She still has 2 months with us and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next!

Jello Cells

My 5th graders are learning about cells in biology class.  We have looked at photos of cells and drawn diagrams.  We watched a short cartoon about the parts of a cell.  One day we made a class model with a human circle for the cell membrane and different students acting out the cell organelles (kids wearing green were the chloroplasts and the bossy kid was the nucleus).   Today we made jello cell models.

Plant cell parts include Mike and Ikes for the Mitochondria, jaw breakers for the nucleus, green licorice for the chloroplasts, large marshmallows for the vacuole and cups for the cell wall.  Technically, we should have a bag inside the cup for a cell membrane, but I have yet to find a bag that fits in the cup.  Each student collects their organelles, and then I squirt green jello cytoplasm into their cup.

Yum!  Actually, it looks really disgusting to my adult taste.  The kids seem to love it, though!

Animal cell parts were similar to the plant cell with the exception of small marshmallows for the vacuoles, no chloroplasts, bags for the cell membrane, and red jello for the cytoplasm.

Yup, more sugar...

Discovering Density

 The sixth graders have been working with density in chemistry class.  We start by learning about mass and volume.  The kids learn how to use a balance scale and a graduated cylinder.  By finding the mass and volume of water and then using the density formula (mass divided by volume), the kids discover that water has a density of 1.0 g/ml.  After they know that information, it is easy to determine if objects will float or sink in water.

I then do four density demonstrations.  The first one involves placing a can of coke and a can of diet coke in a tank of water.  The soda has the same volume, but one floats and one sinks.  (I am not going to reveal which is which, but you can probably figure it out.)  The kids realized that the mass must be different and after a quick check of the scale, we discovered they were correct.

The second demonstration is called "dancing raisins."  If you place raisins in a graduated cylinder full of lemon lime soda, they will dance up and down.  As bubbles collect on their surface, the raisins rise to the top.  Once on the top, the bubbles pop and the raisins sink to the bottom.  It doesn't take long for the kids to figure out that the density of the raisin is changing as it goes up and down.

For the third demonstration we layered fresh water (yellow) on top of salt water (green).  The kids learned that salt water has more stuff (salt) packed into the water and so it has a higher density.

Our final demonstration is my favorite.  Cold water (blue) and hot water (red) are placed in small glass bottles and then turned on their side inside a tank of water.  The cold water sinks to the bottom as it pours out and the hot water floats to the top.  This one is harder to explain, but the kids did a nice job of coming up with some good reasons why hot water has less density than cold water.

We are currently working on a challenge where the 6th graders must figure out how much sand to place in a film canister so it will remain suspended in a tank of water.