Exploring Matter: Does Air Really Exist If We Cannot See It?

We began our new rotations for Science Magic this week in our very own classroom! During these Science Magic experiments we will be exploring all the different states of matter, so today we explored air with Ms. Riley. To begin our session, we talked about what we already knew about matter and what the three types of matter are (solids, liquids, and gas). Then, Ms. Riley asked us our question: does air exist if we cannot see it?Many of us hypothesized that it did because air is in the form of a gas, but we wanted to find proof of air. Ms. Riley set up four centers for us to explore and test our hypothesis!

At Center 1, there were two rubber ducks and a small tub filled with water. Ms. Riley told us to take turns racing the ducks across the tub, but we had to do so without touching the ducks. We discovered that we could use air to blow them across! We also discovered the baseball duck moved better across the water because it had no hole and was filled with air to help it stay on top of the surface, and the surfer duck was harder to move because it did have a hole and got weighed down a bit with water. 

At Center 2, we looked out of our classroom window to look for signs of air outside. We saw tree branches moving in the wind, clouds moving through the sky, and leaves being blown across the pavement. 

At Center 3, We put a tissue in the bottom of a cup and put the cup (open side down) straight down into a bowl of water. We expected to have a wet tissue when we lifted the cup up, but instead we found the tissue was completely dry! An air bubble that got trapped inside the cup when the lip hit the water protected the tissue from getting wet. We were amazed! 

At Center 4, we got to explore with one of our favorite forms of evidence for air: bubbles! We discovered that if we stuck our straws further down in the water, the bubbles that formed were bigger. If we took the straw out of the water and blew the surface of the water, it made a spray, and if we stuck our straw in and made a humming sound instead of blowing out air, there were no bubbles, just tiny waves from the vibrations. 

After we were finished exploring and recording our observations, we found all of our results showed evidence of air, so we concluded that air does indeed exist. Even if we cannot see the air itself, we can find evidence of it all around us! We can't wait to visit Mrs. Healey's class on Monday to do some more exploration of matter.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day from the Giraffes! We enjoyed all sorts of Valentine's Day fun with crafts, stories, experiments, and celebrations. 

After reader's workshop, we decorated our bags for our valentines! 

We then tried the Dancing Hearts experiment, where we added candy hearts to water and seltzer and compared the results

We predicted the candy hearts would be able to "dance" inside of the seltzer because of the bubbles that were attaching to the sides of the candies. We waited and waited until--nothing happened! We were very surprised by our results, but we are going to give the experiment another try next week with some different kinds of seltzer :)

That afternoon, we celebrated with some treats while we passed out our valentines. After opening our sweet cards from our friends, we played some games before we headed off to library!

We also sent home the Valentine craft we made last week at Friday Centers using oil pastels for those we hold close to our hearts:

Thank you to everyone who helped to make our Valentine's Day celebrations so special, and thank you for the love you give to us each and every day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Mystery Science: What Can Magnets Do?

This week, we continued our exploration of magnets through our first Mystery Science experience! Mystery Science is a great classroom resource that leads us through some of the "mysteries" of science with inquiry-based questions and explorations connected to our Next Generation Science Standards. This was our first time using Mystery Science, and we loved every minute we spent exploring the question: 

What Can Magnets Do?

We used our Science Talk norms to discuss our question, and after watching the first Mystery Science video, we got to work exploring! 

we figured out how to use magnets to make a paperclip float

We also figured out how to "magnetize" other objects so they became magnets themselves!

While we explored, we wrote about our thinking and drew pictures of our explorations to keep in our Science Folders

Mr. Fosher even joined us for some magnet fun!

Did you know magnets can even make other magnets float?

After our exploration, we watched the rest of our Mystery Science videos to learn more about what we experienced during our exploration. We noticed that not all metal objects are magnetic, and we learned from the video that metal objects that are magnetic contain iron, and metals that are not magnetic do not. We also learned that only opposite poles of a magnet are attracted to each other, and same poles will repel one another. 

We learned that engineers used the science of repelling magnets to create a train (called a maglev train) that floats along guideways instead of running on a track, creating a friction-less (and VERY fast!) ride. We brainstormed a list of things we could try to invent or create using magnets, and on Friday we broke up into 3 groups to try out our ideas:

Magnetic Paperclip Racetrack

Magnetic Towers

Magnetic Train Model

We were each able to choose one idea we wanted to explore, and we had a 30 minutes to come up with a plan and try it out using the materials we had in our classroom. 

The Magnetic Paperclip Racetrack was made using poster board that we drew a racetrack on. We made the paperclips race around the track by pulling magnets underneath the poster board to guide the paperclip around the track. 

To make our towers, we tested objects around the room to see which objects could be magnetized (objects with iron in them) and we used the largest magnetized items to make our tower and some cool magnetized designs!

For our version of a magnet train, we made a model of a small train connected to 2 magnets and a track. Without touching the train, we used repelling magnets to push the magnet train across the track. 

It was so cool to check out each other's work and think of more ideas for creating with magnets. While we are now finished with our exploration of magnets in the classroom, I hope the giraffes will continue to create new magnet inventions at home and during our choice times!