Happy Valentine's Day!

We had lots of fun celebrating Valentine's Day on Wednesday!

After solving some conversation heart puzzles in math and curling up with some books we loved, we got together with the elephants to celebrate our love of science!

We created some paper hearts and used vinegar (a liquid) and baking soda (a solid) to create some carbon dioxide gas! 

After putting baking soda on our hearts, we added food coloring to the vinegar to make it easier to see the reaction and dripped it on top of our hearts. After it fizzled out, it left some cool designs!

After our Safari Time, we headed back to our classroom to deliver our Valentines. Everyone agreed that this was their favorite part of the day!

Each of the giraffes thanked their friends and teachers for their sweet cards and gifts, and enjoyed reading their notes and eating some sweet treats before heading home. 

Thank you to everyone who fills our classroom with so much love and kindness! 

Happy Valentine's Day!

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.

A Toast to 2018!

The Giraffes had a great start to the new year with a short but sweet week!

On Tuesday, we had some fun with the Elephant Class when we created New Year's Toasts during Safari Time! We talked about how people often toast to others in the new year who mean a lot to them and during the toast, they celebrate the things they love most about that person. 

Here are a few of the people we toasted to:

We also continued our work with borrowing and carrying in math this week, and we learned a new math game! Seventeen was so much fun to play, and it helped us practice our math facts as well as our carrying skills! Here are the directions so you can play at home:

Despite the frigid weather, we were able to get outside briefly to begin experimenting with States of Matter! We learned that everything in the world is made up of matter, including the air around us! Matter can be a solid, liquid, or gas, and matter can change its state.

When we were outside, we collected snow to explore and experiment with in the classroom. After we got inside, we explored the question "What will make snow melt the fastest?" 

After brainstorming a list of ideas, each table group worked together to explore a different method for melting the snow. Even though many people wanted to try the same method, the giraffes did a great job being flexible and working together to test all of our hypotheses! One table put the snow in warm water, another put theirs in cold water, one put theirs on the heater, one used plates to squish the snow, and one used bodies to melt the snow :)

We discovered that out of all the methods we tested, hot water was the fastest method for melting snow. But many of us were surprised to see that the cold water also worked very quickly along with squishing the snow! We were also shocked to see how long it took the snow to melt on the heater, and we discovered the fastest way to melt snow using our bodies was to hold small amounts of it in our hands. We can't wait to do some more exploring with matter in the weeks ahead, and we look forward to a new year of second grade adventures :)

Happy New Year!