{Cranberry Thanksgiving}

I wanted to post about our Thanksgiving Cranberry Experiments, but of course unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of most of it. So...I will include some pictures from the Internet to give you an idea of what we did!

 

We learned that cranberries do float in water because they have air pockets inside. Cranberry farmers use this to their advantage when it is time to harvest the cranberries. 

We also discovered that if you apply extreme heat, the gas inside the cranberries will expand until it bursts! The cranberries sound like popcorn in hot water!

We then examined a dried cranberry's surface and noticed that it had a lot of bumps and ridges. When we put it in a cup of carbonated soda, the air bubbles would catch on the surface of the dried cranberry and bring it to the top of the liquid. The air bubbles would pop and the cranberry would fall down to the bottom of the cup. It would then get caught on another set of bubbles, thus performing and up and down dance.

And finally, we ended with a cranberry STEM Challenge! Who can design a catapult that will launch a cranberry the farthest? This was so much fun! We set up a launching range, measured in yards, and released the cranberries from our starting line!

  The farthest launch (witnessed by me) was held by Ronan and Gavin! 16 yards!!

{Sincerely, Native American Child}

Imagine you are a Creek or Cherokee child. Write a diary or journal entry describing your life. What kinds of activities do you do? What kinds of chores do you have? What are your favorite kinds of games? If you are on the Trail of Tears, what is it like?

Take us back in time.

{Happy Owl-o-ween!}

We got to investigate dry ice for Super Science the week of Halloween! Boy was it cool! Literally. It was so cold, it burned. We had to wear gloves!

Did you know that dry ice is solid Carbon Dioxide? The solid carbon dioxide changes to a gas when it meets warm air. Yep, you heard that right! It skips the liquid state and goes straight to a gas state. We call this SUBLIMATION.

Here we are trapping the carbon dioxide that is released inside bubbles! Popping them was a treat. It looked like smoke!

The Twosies also got to trap the gas beneath a liquid barrier. As the gas filled up all the available space, it popped the barrier and released into the room.

Here, the gas that was released from the dry ice filled a balloon.

After warming a coin in their hand, the Twosies pressed it into a block of dry ice. The warmth of the coin caused the solid carbon dioxide to immediately sublimate into gas. As the gas pushed passed the coin, it caused pressure that made the coin vibrate ad make a loud buzzing noise. 

You can check it out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vel_14LeHh4

We also completed another STEM Challenge that didn't turn out quite like I hoped! The students were given candy corn and toothpicks and had to build the tallest structure they could in 15 minutes. We found out very quickly, that our candy corn crumbled when you put more than two toothpicks in them. So...we didn't make too much progress!

Mac and I were able to get a tower to stand 8 in. tall and won the challenge! Of course the class determined that wasn't fair because Mrs. Hilley was an expert. I quickly assured them I am no expert at building towers with candy corn and that this was my first attempt as well! 

And just for fun, here are the second grade teachers on Storybook Character Day...

{Nocturnal Animal Google Slides}

The students were introduced to Google Slides last week! The students created a digital poster sharing the information they learned about their nocturnal animal. Here are the final products: