Story Problems and Kitchen Chemistry
/This week our young mathematicians dove deep into exploring story problems. We worked on creating representations of story problems, acting out the problems, and representing the problems using pictures and numbers. We discovered that there are a variety of types of story problems. The trickiest ones for most children are the story problems where the starting number or one of the addends is missing, instead of the problems where the total is missing. By imagining, acting out, and representing the problems, students are getting better at determining what a problem is asking and how to go about solving it. Students created their own story problems about classmates and other real life events too. We were working on math, writing, acting, and drawing all at the same time! We will continue working with story problems this year even as we move on to new math topics. First graders are beginning a mini unit on Using Data to Describe and Wonder. Yesterday they worked with partners to sort and classify different rocks. Next week they will figure out interesting ways to display their data. Second graders will begin a mini-unit on the Foundations of Multiplication next week. In our outdoor classroom this week we made some interesting discoveries that required a bit of detective work and research. We discovered hundreds of aphids on our lupine plants and watched a ladybug devouring those aphids. We also discovered some worker termites in an old stump. During unit studies we continued our exploration of matter and chemistry in the kitchen! We did a dancing raisin demonstration to discover what would happen when the carbonation gas in soda attached to the surfaces of raisins. The carbon dioxide bubbles acted like little flotation devices that increased the buoyancy of the raisins, causing them to rise to the surface. When they reached the surface, the carbon dioxide bubbles popped, releasing the carbon dioxide into the air. This caused the buoyancy of the raisins to decrease, which made them sink. And so it went on and on, making it appear as though our raisins were dancing. We also did some baking science where we observed chemical and physical changes as we made bread in a bag. For example, we noticed that when we left the yeast, sugar, flour, and water overnight, the yeast enzymes broke down the sugar, releasing carbon dioxide into the bag. This caused our bag to expand and fill with air. We discovered that the yeast in bread causes it to rise and makes it fluffy. We noticed little pockets of air in our bread loaves where the gas bubbles were. We also learned how to turn liquid heavy cream into a delicious solid- butter! We discoverd that science is all around us in the kitchen, and boy is it tasty! We ended our week together with some buddy reading time, a trip to the Pacific library, and some time in the sunshine.
