We started off the morning a little differently. The students right away noticed their Snowmen chart and the bags of marshmallows that we were using to measure the height of the snowmen. Of course, marshmallows, even stale hard ones, are enticing to children. We worked on measuring our snowmen and occasionally had a marshmallow jump out of our hands and into our mouths. About 15 minutes, the girls started to get fidgety and lose interest in measuring and had more interest in eating the marshmallows. So we concluded the activity and moved onto our usual morning routine.
We read "The Magical Snowman" by Catherine Walters. It is a wonderful story that sparks imagination in children. We had a quick discussion about why dad didn't really believe little bunny and we decided it was because little bunny was using his imagination.
We moved on to making our own magical snowman, in the form of an exciting science project. We made snowmen out of baking soda play dough. It took 1 c. baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, and about 4 Tbs. of warm water (just enough to make a sturdy dough). I can't find the source of the recipe, but I will look for it and give credit when I find it.
In the true spirit of being a scientist one of the students decided to taste the play dough. We had talked about what the ingredients were in the dough and that it was edible, but would not be very tasty. She tried a bite and this was her reaction. We rinsed the taste out with water and continued our experiment.
After making our snowmen, I presented 2 different spray bottles of clear liquid, water and vinegar. We followed the Scientific Method and started with the question: What will happen to the snowman when I spray the clear liquid #1 onto it? We hypothesized that the snowman might melt like when an outside snowman gets rained on. We conducted the experiment, we struggled while we worked on strengthening our fingers, and we pushed down the pump and sprayed the first clear liquid on our snowmen. It took quite a few sprays before the clear liquid had any affect on our snowmen. We recorded our results by talking about them. Finally we concluded that with enough clear liquid our snowman would melt and our hypothesis was correct.
Our second experiment started when I presented the second spray bottle, clear liquid #2, and asked the same question. With the question asked we formed a hypothesis. We decided that clear liquid #2 would have the same affect on our snowman. We conducted the experiment and sprayed the second liquid on the snowmen. At first the result was hardly visible, not enough liquid. The scientists were relentless and continued spraying and then it happened. The snowmen began to bubble and the more liquid #2 that was sprayed on the snowmen the more they bubbled. This was an unexpected and yet a delightful surprise. One of the scientists remembered making an erupting volcano with an older sibling and made the connection that the results were similar. One of the scientist asked if she could pour more liquid #2 on her snowman to see the result. So we poured the last couple of tablespoons of liquid #2 on our snowmen and they really started erupting and bubbling everywhere. We again discussed our results and concluded that our hypothesis was incorrect.
For our snack we took nuts, like the ones squirrels store for winter, and made our own nut butter. We used 1 C whole raw almonds, 2 Tbs. Canola oil, and a pinch of salt; and mixed them up in the blender. Blending the nuts didn't give us just the right texture so we added 2 more Tbs. Canola oil.
This made a rather thin almond butter but it was thick enough to spread on crackers and thin enough to use as a dip for our apple curls (made with an Apple peeler/corer/slicer from Pampered Chef). It was a delicious treat that we washed down with milk.
After all the fun experimenting in the kitchen we didn't have a lot of time to get dressed for the snow outside, play for a while, and then get undressed and still have time to enjoy an activity before going home. So ... I decided to bring out my new Partner Parachute and let them play with it. It is so much easier for them to control than the 6' parachute.
They created new games to play with the parachute.
We finished the day with a quiet game of Snowman Bump. The dice seemed to want to roll away so we put them in a container to keep them close by the game.
Homework was doing a Static Electricity experiment, counting and tracing numbers with a nut theme, and sharing their almond butter with their family so they could report back on how many liked the almond butter. Here is a side way view of the recording sheet. The smiley face was for things that were attracted to the balloon's static electricity and the straight face was for those things that did not react to the static electricity.
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