Can You Poke a Stick Through A Balloon Without Popping It? Learning About Polymers

During our morning meeting I asked my kiddos what would happen if I poked a bamboo skewer through a balloon.  Of course they said it would pop.  Are you sure? I asked them and then showed them the balloon above. Oohs and Ahhs abounded along with, "Mrs. Malloy, how did you do that?"

So... in my best teacher bribery way I told them that if they worked really hard and productively all day, I would teach them how to do it (of course I planned on teaching them how to anyway since it was in my lesson plan, but they didn't have to know that right?).

When the time for science finally came around, I told them that we were going to practice their skills of observation.  I was going to SHOW them how to do it, but I wasn't going to TELL them how.  I silently demonstrated and then handed out supplies.

Balloons were blown.

And then they attempted to poke.  A few balloons popped, but most of the students were successful on their first try.

And once they tasted success, they had to add a challenge - let's see who can poke the most sticks into the balloon without popping it!

 

Eleven was our class record!

 

 

The trick? Put vegetable oil on the stick to make it a little easier (optional) - then insert the stick at the bottom part (where the balloon is tied) and exit through the strongest part at the other end.

 



We then watched this video to learn about what polymers are:


And finished the lesson by making our own human polymer chains!

 

We will be learning about how scientists use polymers to clean up oil spills using a kit from Steve Spangler soon, but I wanted to give them a brief introduction before.  They loved it!

Comparing Water and Land on the Earth

Today we started our unit for Common Core Standard RI.3.3 - Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.

I decided to create a unit that revolved around Earth Day since that is coming up soon.

We started with a scientific and mathematical exploration of how much land and water there is on the Earth.  To simulate this, I threw an inflatable globe for the students to catch.  They had to tell me where their thumbs landed, on the land or on water.

A student then kept a tally of the results on our new Smart Board.  (YES! I am super exicted - we just got it two weeks ago, so I no longer have Smart Board envy!).

After a few rounds, I had them make predictions about how many times it would land on each if we threw it 100 times. I needed to remind a few that their totals needed to equal 100 - a fun little mini-math lesson! We continued on and finished with the results below:

I let them look at the globe and answer how close their predictions were, and why they thought we came up with the results that we did. 

Here were some responses: