Act II: The Shrinking Egg!

We continue to amaze ourselves as young magicians, but we did it again! We mastered yet another egg magic act! This one is called the "Shrinking Egg," and the name will not leave you disappointed. My students took turns pouring Karo Syrup (corn syrup) on top of our shell-less egg. Over night, our once opaque egg turned into a shriveled up mess! It was pretty cool to see this huge change, and my students LOVED feeling the egg.

My Peeps Are...Dissolving?!

Welcome back to our continuation of the Dissolving Peeps Experiment! My students made their Day 3  peep observations. Compare these photos to those of my previous post. :) 

Day 4:

Still bright pink, but starting to get smaller in size.

WHOA! Our poor little peep only has half of his body left!

This looks totally and completely disgusting, but of course, I still had PLENTY of students who offered to eat this peep right up (don't worry: I did NOT allow that to happen!) GROSS!

So fresh and so clean! This little peep has been stripped of its pink-ness but smells great!

My students completed their observations and noted that the vinegar had the biggest chemical reaction to the peep. We were surprised because many of us (myself included!) thought that the Pepsi Max would cause the peep to dissolve the fasted. I loved this experiment because my students looked forward to completing their observations each day and were telling their parents all about it!

Check Out My Peeps!

 I told my class that "I brought my peeps with me to school today," although that one went over their heads:) Their interest was peeked when I pulled them out of the package and discussed our new science experiment that will take place for the rest of the week. My students were given a spreadsheet with Day 1- Day 5 across the top and a box for each ingredient going down the left-hand side. Their job was to observe any changes that occurred within our peeps. Each day, students are to complete their observations. We then discuss our findings with the rest of the class.

Day 1: We set a peep in the following liquids: water, apple juice, vinegar, soda (we did Pepsi Max), and laundry detergent.

Day 2: Here are some pictures from what we've discovered so far:

Almost no change with the water, except giving the water a little pink tint.

The eyes are starting to"melt" or slide down the peep's face.

Lots of changes! Our peep has actually lost part of his body in the vinegar-yikes!

Very stained and pretty spongy.

We have all been surprised with the detergent so far. The pink has been magically wiped away, and it is is really soft to the touch.

Keep an eye out for Days 3-5 to come soon!

We're Magicians: First You See an Eggshell...Now You Don't!

You heard right! My class can now successfully complete (drum roll please)....THE DISAPPEARING ACT! (With an egg that is!) We are trying out some new science experiments, and this one is proving to be a hit! We put a raw egg in a glass bowl and poured vinegar over the top. I placed this under my data projector while we were working on an activity so my students could look up and observe what was happening every once in a while. They were excited with all of the bubbles that were forming around the egg, but they were in for a huge surprise (and so was I, this being my first time doing this and all!).

After sitting for the rest of the day and all night, my students were anxious to see what changes had taken place. They put their Scientist's Goggles on (so to speak) and observed the egg. We noticed that there was a lot of things floating towards the top of the bowl of vinegar. We decided to explore further and touch it. When I rubbed it with my thumb, the shell (or what used to be the shell) came right off! The kids oohhhed and awwweed; they were pretty impressed. After the entire white shell was off, we were left with an egg whose yolk you could actually see. I had my students come up and hold it in their hands to feel our egg's newfound texture: we decided the best way to describe it was "water balloon." 

We are now exploring another experiment with this egg. We poured Karo Syrup over the top of the egg and are interested to see what results we get with this one! Stay tuned!

Operation Garage Organization :)

Now that Spring Break is here (although you wouldn't know it since it is actually SNOWING outside), I decided to get myself in gear and get some things more organized. My first job to tackle: the garage. Let's just say the garage has been a special place reserved for...well...anything and everything. We had the usual garage clutter offenders: auto items, outdoors equipment, tools, etc...but there were also things like boxes of electronic equipment left over from my husband's business or my piles of clothes/old shoes that needed to be donated. Let's just say the garage was, well, pure and utter chaos. Until now. The best part? I only had to buy a few hooks and the paint!

Normally I buy my paint from Home Depot because I really like Behr paint,  but I had this gut feeling to check out the selection at Lowe's (which is also a great store!). Whenever possible, I browse through the "mis-tint" paint section and wouldn't you know the exact color of orange was there as a paint and primer for $5.00! It was meant to be!

For whatever reason, my computer didn't allow me to turn this picture, but these hooks are AMAZING! All you need is a screwdriver (not even a drill), and they install in a matter in minutes. You don't even have to locate the stud-just put them where you want them!

Here are my left-over cans of paint, spray paint, and caulking. They took up too much space for my shelving, so I placed it here. Paint brushes and other painting tools were stored in a tin can.

The bright lights kind of mess with this picture, but here is our "outdoor" section. Chairs, golf bags, radio, coolers, ladderball, water balloons, roller blades, etc...

Although small, this does the trick for our "auto" section. Windshield fluid, oil, and cables are all in one neat little area.

 

This is quite possibly my favorite area of the garage:) We already had these handy drawers, so I spray-painted them and put cute labels on to easily organize them. Before I actually pulled everything out of the garage, I could not tell you what tools we had/or where it might be lying. Small items were stored here. Hammers, screwdrivers, sanders, and drills are on the shelves below (in black cabinet).

We also have 3 large white tables that I stored behind the black cabinet. Now all I have to do is paint the door and put a curtain on it. I started to label the items where our hanging tools are using a stencil, but that turned out to be an epic fail. Spray paint was not the best idea for that one. I repainted my mess up gray again and will return to that later. :) At least the garage is finally organized.

 

Trapping Leprechauns!

Well it's that time of year again! Time to go Leprechaun Hunting! We started the week off by brainstorming things we knew about leprechauns (what they look like, what they wear, etc...). Then the conversation turned to how AWESOME it would be to actually catch a leprechaun...I'm not sure what we'd do with one once we got it, but that's beside the point;)

Students designed a plan to build a Leprechaun Trap using items from our room. Some were quite interesting...for example: "Let's get a plastic Easter egg. Put a piece of gold in it, and then when he comes, we snap it shut!" I then asked who would be stationed here all night because I sure wasn't staying all night! Then we came up with the design shown above, which of course we tested out. We put the pot of gold (yes, real gold not the plastic coins. If you were to use plastic coins, though, I'm sure putting rocks at the bottom of the pot to make it heavier and more believable would work just fine-not speaking from experience or anything;) It might also help to  tell the kiddos that if you touch the gold it takes away the real gold's smell, thus making the scent not as strong for a Leprechaun to detect.

 We put the gold out on our counter to let him know that he had it here for him, and Lennox the Lucky Leprechaun actually visited our room and wrote us a note! He said he could smell the gold but couldn't find it yet. Then we found our Leprechaun book out. He must have been catching up on his reading!

 He also pulled out my green blanket that covers my chair. We thought it looked like he had tried to climb the blanket to get closer to the counter where the gold was...

The day that we set our Leprechaun Trap, students wrote Lennox all kinds of notes! I had to go to a meeting that afternoon, but this is what I came back to:) They wanted to make sure he saw ALL of them, especially because Lennox wrote back to students who had written to him the day before. There was even a cheez-it sitting in with the trap in case he got hungry! Sidenote: this leprechaun has TERRIBLE handwriting! My students giggled when he said that he was just learning to write in cursive:)

We decided that we should all enter the room at the same time in the morning to see if our trap had worked. I promised that I would lock my door as soon as I got here, but that I would not peek in. It drove me crazy not to get to school early, but I kept my word. I did not come to school early. When we tip-toed into the room, this is what we saw:

Prepare yourselves! (especially those that are OCD!)

......

Sometime during the night, Lennox golfed, hopped through my cabinets, tossed desks and chairs around, sprinkled Leprechaun glitter around, and who knows what else!?

It was a CATASTROPHE! My kids were shocked, but we had to find out: Did we catch Lennox?!!

I took a video of the whole thing, but sadly, no, we did not catch our Leprechaun friend. However, Lennox did leave green mints, gum, glow sticks, and chocolate gold coins for all of my students. I guess I'll forgive him for giving me a mild heart attack:) My students KNEW this was the real deal because "Mrs. Watkins would NEVER EVER do that to our room!" (their words).

The chaos lasts for a little while but eventually everything gets picked back up (and re-organized right before Spring Break!) and gets back to normal. This is one of my favorite days of the entire school year:)

Chop Stack Challenge!

We earned our Mystery Message today entitled "Chop Stack." Using chop sticks, my kiddos were challenged to pick up chap stick and try to stack it one on top of the other. This was a pretty difficult task; I couldn't do it in the one minute! We also made another challenge using cups and chops sticks. The students really enjoyed attempting to stack them or make a pyramid. They are begging for more tries! I think I'll use it as a motivator to get other tasks done. ;)