As you can see from the photo, we build craters all Thursday afternoon. The word ALL is important because we did science for two hours. We started with reading the amazing true story by Patricia Polacco called Meteor! I shared with the class when Patricia Polacco came for an author visit to our school several years ago. She brought a piece of the meteor that landed in her grandparent's yard. Our whole school got to touch it and that was a special memory for me as I read the book to our classes.
After building the anticipation, we got out the blue tubs, white flour, cocoa powder, measuring tapes and the 3 meteorites which were a marble, wooden ball and a tennis ball. We reviewed the scientific procedure, set up their lab notebooks, and discussed the importance of variables. Then the students created their own craters dropping the "meteors" from 150 cm. They had so much fun. First of all what fifth grader wouldn't enjoy dropping stuff into a pan full of flour? The scientific part was fun to observe also. They learned about the importance of measuring the diameter of the crater and also how cool it was to observe the rays that "shot" out which was the white flour on top of the chocolate cocoa. They repeated the experiment three times, so they had to clean the lunar surface with their index card. What a fun way to spend Thursday afternoon. I checked at Wonderopolis and found the following wonders, and I encouraged our classes to check them out during their three day weekend.
Wonder #422 Is the Sky Falling?
Wonder #268 How Will Future Astronauts Travel to Outer Space?
Wonder #11 What Causes a Shooting Star?
So wonderful that you were able to tie all these learning experiences together...."meteor" is such an awesome book on so many levels.
ReplyDeleteHooray for the ALL!!
ReplyDeleteI love your line..."She brought a piece of the meteor that landed in her grandparent's yard. Our whole school got to touch it and that was a special memory for me as I read the book to our classes."...Priceless!!!!!!
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