Hands-on Learning

Lots of hands-on learning has been going on in a variety of subjects the past few weeks. Our class began our physical science unit learning about the 3 states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), physical and chemical changes, and mixtures in a variety of interactive ways including using Scholastic Study Jams to learn about physical and chemical changes...

and classifying picture cards as a physical or chemical change...

The highlight of the unit was conducting a "Magic Milk" experiment to create a chemical change. Students observed food coloring drops didn't move in a bowl of whole milk...

However, when we added a few drops of dish detergent the food coloring "ran" to the edges of the bowl and then swirled together!

Our smart scientists figured out the fat in the whole milk reacted with the dish detergent causing a chemical reaction, which we observed as the rainbow swirls in the milk.

Our language arts unit on nouns also included lots of hands-on learning activities such as "Fishing for Irregular Nouns". Each student used a toy fishing rod to catch a magnetic fish with a noun written on it. The student had to change the singular noun into its irregular plural noun form such as changing "goose" to "geese" and "woman" to "women".

 Happy learning!