Thoughtful Thursday: Skittle Science

We did a little science experiment with Lil Man that we found on Candy Experiments. We all enjoyed it!

It's a really easy experiment to do. All you need is a bowl or cup, water, and Skittles!

We started with just a few Skittles to see what would happen...

The colors at the bottom were really cool! 

All you do is drop the Skittle into the water (gently) letter side up. The color coating will dissolve in the water (we used warm water to help possibly speed up the process). The "S" is printed in an edible ink that doesn't dissolve in the water. If you watch it slides off into the water; then the letter floats to the top. At some points when the color was dissolving it almost looked like the Skittle was spinning. We ended up with a lot of Skittles in our bowl...Can you see the floating S's?

Here's a video (it's actually like 2 or 3 combined):

It's the very beginning and the very end of our experiment. At the end you'll see a green Skittle dissolve and the S float to the top!

Hope you enjoy our little experiment; we sure did!

Earth Science

Hey everyone it is time for Through Time and Space Thursday and this week we are going to focus on Earth Science. What kind of Earth Science topics do your students have to learn? Earth Science is a hard concept for many students to understand. It is a hard to think about the planet we live on and all the things inside it and all the things happening on it.

When my 5^th grade students had to learn many Earth Science topics last year we decided to create centers for the students to learn these concepts with a hands-on approach. We also wanted students to make a PowerPoint presentation of the concepts they were learning to present to the class at the end of the unit. These centers covered topics like earthquakes, volcanoes, erosion, weathering, constructive and deconstructive processes, sand dunes, and deltas. It was a two week long unit. It was not an easy task to pull off but we had the 3 teachers in the room at the time. It was really a great unit and the students enjoyed learning about Earth science.

For more information about our Earth Science centers take a look at our Earth Science Packet at our TpT store. (Coming soon...we'll update this post as soon as it's posted!)

~Manda

What's with the Weather?

With all the crazy weather we've been having it seems a very fitting science topic to discuss this week. Here in Georgia lately it's been rainy one day, warm and sunny the next, and snowing (doesn't stick) the next.

Tie it all in...

Have your students keep a weather calendar for at least 2 weeks. They can do this individually or together as a group. Once they've collected the data, tie in math by graphing the information gathered. Depending on the grade level, you can extend even more on that by finding the mean, median, and mode. With the younger grades it's a good way to practice reading the information from the graph. Another thing I've done with younger ones is an online game What's the Weather? that practices reading thermometers. The student reads the temperature and decides what the fussy bear should wear to go outside. This game can help with the "but I don't want to wear my jacket to recess...it's hot" battle that we face as teachers. Tell your students what the temperature is and ask them what 'fussy bear' would wear to go out.

What do you do with weather in your classroom?

Have you been having crazy weather like us?


~Steph