In kindergarten we learned a lot about thermometers, temperature, and making predictions! To start off our lesson we looked at some very interesting slides about all the different temperatures around the world.
Here are some of the facts we learned:
The hottest place on Earth is Death Valley, California. It can reach 134*F!
The coldest place on Earth is Antarctica. It can be -128*F there!
The center of the sun is 27,000,000*F!
The air outside of an airplane is -50*F!
After discussing how temperatures can go up and down each student was given a thermometer to investigate! I was asked many interesting questions about why there was red blood inside the thermometer : ) and why it moved with the temperature. After some quick clarification students were given their first question! What temperature are our thermometers measuring right now and what do we think they are measuring? Once we knew we were measuring the air temperature we set out to explore some more! Students were paired up and given a measuring cup and a small container. Together they measured out 125mL of water using their measuring cups and then took the temperature of their water. Students were stumped! Why was the water the same temperature as the air? After a short discussion I told students I had placed the water out for them the day before so it had adjusted to the air temperature.
Then I took out a large bag of ice!
I had students make predictions about what they thought would happen when we placed ONE ice cube into their container and as we continued we slowly added THREE ice cubes. Students were amazed by how quickly their thermometers dropped from 80*F to 40*F right before their eyes! To finish our activity we projected a "Using a Thermometer" worksheet onto the whiteboard and together we filled in our findings! Ask your Kindergartener what they learned about temperature and thermometers in STEAM class this week :)
In 2nd grade STEAM we began our unit on properties of matter with a brainstorm, song, and a scavenger hunt all about matter!
Here are the lyrics to our new song:
States of Matter
(To the tune of Farmer in the Dell)
Solid, Liquid, Gas
Solid, Liquid, Gas
Three states of matter,
Solid, Liquid, Gas
A solid keeps its shape,
Some are hard, some can break,
Like a table of a role of tape,
A solid keeps its shape.
A liquid shape depends
On the container that it's in.
Like a cup, bottle, or a metal tin,
A liquid shape depends.
A gas you cannot see,
It's in the air we breath,
Helium, oxygen, or steam,
A gas you cannot see.
Ask your 2nd grader to sing it to you!
After singing we talked about MOLECULES (the tiny particles everything is made from) and as a class we acted out how the molecules behave in each state of matter.
Here is Mrs. Hajj's class acting out how
molecules are for solids, liquids, and gases:
We learned that solids have tightly packed molecules that are very organized, liquids have molecules that are close together, but they can move and slide past each other, and that gas molecules spread out and move very fast! Students really enjoyed being up and moving around as molecules : )
To finish our lesson we did a classroom scavenger hunt to see how many of each state of matter we could find right in our very own classroom and together we created a master list of everything we found! Ask your 2nd grader what their favorite part of STEAM was this week!!
Check back next week to see more STEAM highlights!
-Mrs. Henderson
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