Mixtures and Solutions

We kicked off our unit on mixtures and solutions Monday. Students combined diatomaceous earth and water, NaCl and water, and gravel and water. After making mixtures, they attempted to get me all the ingredients back. A screen was used to get the gravel back, but was too big for the diatomaceous earth. So, someone suggested a paper filter. This was successful, but didn't get back the NaCl, as it was a special mixture called a solution. Wednesday we will investigate how to get back the NaCl.

Interviewing for Podcasts

We are now well into our interviews for making podcasts. Taking part of the NPR Student Podcast Challenge, groups of students brainstormed topics that could be good stories. Currently, some include: views on Nerf guns, vets and their jobs, the better animal being cats or dogs, etc. Students are interviewing people in the community, teachers, and other students. Once interviews are conducted, they will clip segments and join them together, along with a narration to tell a story using other people's words. We will be using iMovie for the editing part.

The Lamps are Done!

What a great job the students did in making the deer antler lamps and then drawing (all themselves), by tracing, pictures of Lake Tahoe on the shade. Finally, they had to color them with colored pencil. The hardest part was making both lamps stand the same height. Additionally, they had to draw and color each shade exactly the same since they are a set. That was really hard. I'm so proud of our class. We finished Friday afternoon, the date they were due. This has been a two-month project, working many hours at recess times and taking a student at a time during class time to work on the project.