Wonder #16

Why do we change the clocks twice a year?

Do you want to fly a kite?

This week we have been learning all about wind! Today, I asked the kids if they thought we would be able to fly a kite outside. They suggested we check our wind vane to find out. After observing our wind vane for a few minutes, they realized the wind vane doesn't tell us how hard the wind is blowing, just the direction it was blowing! This was such a great learning experience using our previously made tool. The next suggestion made was to check the weather channel on the Internet. This told us that the wind was blowing 8mph. We were now ready to try to fly our kites!

We started by trying to fly them inside of the classroom:

We quickly realized this was not possible because there was no wind in the classroom! We decided to take our kites outside.

All About Clouds

Today, we learned all about clouds.  To start our lesson, I asked the students, "What do you think would happen if I put a bar of Ivory soap in the microwave for 1 & 1/2 minutes?"  Well to their surprise, it made a man-made cloud!  The students LOVED passing the cloud around and feeling it with their own hands.  One student even said,"I have always thought that a cloud would feel like this!"  I shared a picture of our cloud with you below.

After starting our lesson with the cloud experiment, we then took a wonder walk outside to observe the clouds.  Unfortunately for us, it was a VERY foggy morning and we could not make out the different shapes of clouds.  We are going to try again tomorrow!

After returning inside, I showed the following video to help my kids learn some more facts about clouds.

We focused on the part of the video when the white and fluffy clouds turned into the dark, storm clouds.  I asked, "Why does it rain?"  Immediately the students responded, "Because the cloud fills up and can't hold any more water.  So it falls out."  I was SO excited about this answer!  After that, we proceeded to do an experiment to find out how much rain a cloud can hold.  

We used this wonderopolis wonder: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-much-rain-can-a-cloud-hold/

We completed the experiment: Rain Cloud in a cup.  The idea originated from the following website: 

http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2014/02/rain-clouds-in-jar-experiment.html

We started by completing one experiment as a whole class.  We added water and then shaving cream on top.  In the blue cup, we mixed water and blue food coloring.  After adding droplets, it took us 43 drops to make it rain in our cup.

Next, it was the student's turn to complete the experiment on their own!  It was amazing as I walked around listening to my students count over 100 as they added drops of "rain."  I told them that they were adding so much rain that they were creating a monsoon! :)

This was definitely one of my favorite experiments we have done so far this year!  The students were having so much fun, very engaged, and learned a lot!  We ended our lesson as the students recorded their observations and the amount of rain drops it took to make their cloud rain in their wonder journals.  

What is a wind vane?

Today, we learned about wind vanes.  We learned that meteorologists use wind vanes to tell the direction of the wind.

We thought it would be cool to make our own wind vane!

Our final product:

Next, we placed it outside with our rain gauge!

We are loving being able to observe these tools to help as we predict the weather!

What will the wind blow?

Today, we experimented to answer the question, "What will the wind blow?"  We discussed windy weather and predicted different items that we thought the wind would blow.  After our discussion, it was time for us to try it out ourselves!  We pretended that we were the wind and had nine different stations that we rotated between to find out if our own wind could blow it.  Before experimenting, we made predictions about each of the nine objects (kleenex, spoon, feathers, straw, blocks, crayons, pencils, and paperclips).

Below are some pictures as we tried this out on our own!

We had so much fun experimenting to find out what the wind will blow. As we wrapped up, we discussed how easy it was to blow the feather. The students suggested that this was because the feather is SO light! On the contrary, we discussed how the metal spoon was the hardest object to move. Based off of our previous prediction, we predicted that the spoon was so hard to move because it was heavy! 

My kindergarteners continue to amaze me every day! We are looking forward to more activities during our unit on weather!

Jake's Crystal Experiment

Today, Jake brought an experiment that he received for his birthday and wanted our class to conduct!

At the end of the day, we had not seen any progress with our crystals. We are hoping that something will happen overnight! I will give you an update tomorrow!

Update 3/25/15: So we did not have any of the huge crystals that you see here in the picture, however, we did have some small crystals form along the edge of the plastic container.  As a class, we discussed how sometimes science experiments don't work out like we hoped.  We talked about how scientists face this and how they just do more research to figure out what happened... that is where we are heading next! :)  We love wondering and researching in kindergarten!!

What is a rain gauge?

Meteorologists use lots of tools to help them predict the weather!  We are studying a few of those tools this week.

Yesterday, we researched about rain gauges and learned that they tell us how much precipitation we have had so far. After researching, we built our own rain gauge.

We placed our rain gauge outside of our classroom to observe the amount of precipitation we get over the next few weeks!

After building our rain gauge, we learned about the water cycle!  We learned about evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.  As a class, we created our very own water cycle in a bag to watch the cycle take place!

We learned this song to help us remember the water cycle.