We keep a bucket with Pump Rockets and foam rockets in the basement for play emergencies. You can make Foam Rocket toys. (Here is a similar design with a paper protractor, should you want to estimate the range.) Wear safety glasses or goggles whenever you launch rockets! We keep a large bin in the basement, too.
Another classic rocket is the Film Canister Rocket. Put 1/4th of an Alka-seltzer tablet into a film canister, fill with water, snap on the top, and run. Next try a 1/2 tablet. Usually a whole tablet reacts so quickly you can’t snap on the top before it erupts. We perform rocket trials at the cul-de-sac down the street, away from the neighbors. Below, we tried the Exploding Art rockets on the sidewalk. It was pink for weeks.
The University of Oklahoma has produced a website, K20 Learn, full of resources. First, all of this is free, largely under a Creative Commons License. K20 has popped up in recent searches. Let’s give it a look!
Look at Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire! In order to access all of the materials I need to use the videos on the website and download the files to Google Drive. The lesson is highly scripted. (While I want to drive a fork into my eye whenever I read through scripted lessons, they are useful if you are unfamiliar with the material.) I like to stay on top of educational practices. It doesn’t mean I adopt them. I want to see what the method is, first. I cannot see myself using Chain Notes. When I taught I found Bell Ringers and Exit Notes anathema. (I needed every minute of class time to teach! Attendance takes about one minute. If Admin insisted on Bell Ringers, we began with a question or problem germane to the lesson.) The K20 science lessons are in 5E lessons. (BSCS developed this model in the 1980s. It’s a good approach!)
Back to Great Balls of Fire and evaluating K20 Learn resources. For whatever reason, the Lesson Slides are located on the website’s page at the bottom. In the lesson slides are pictures of the videos, rather than embedded videos. The teacher uses the script, video links, and resource links to teach. This can be confusing. Instead, let’s look at the resources. Here is the background, Card Sort, Card Sort Hand-out, Chat Station hand-out, and Chat Station Cards. These resources and the video below are all useful. What about the rest? Not so much. However, I don’t consider this sort of evaluation a waste of time. I hadn’t heard about S-I-T: Surprising, Interesting, Troubling. Will I use it? Doubtful. I’m only interested in the materials which promote a lesson and help kiddos understand. I’m willing to try the card sort and chat station to see if these help kiddos understand reactions and reaction types. It’s also why I won’t immediately dismiss a new resource, even one chock-full of educational jargon and strategies.
I test regularly; I assess all the time! What’s the difference? A test or quiz can be recorded and saved. Assessment can be informal. I want to gauge understanding. This past year, we reviewed the names of the bones, muscles, and lobes regularly. I was assessing whether or not the kiddos still knew the names. One tool I use for assessment is a card sort. A card sort is different from a Concept Map, which helps me see if a student understands both the terms and the relationships among the terms or concepts.
Card sorts are quick. For example, right after a lesson, you can do a card sort. The first time or two I do a sort as a group, especially with younger kiddos. Go over the answers together. If there are many mistakes, there is still confusion about the topic. You can stop and address the problem immediately. I see assessment as part of instruction. Below are card sorts with lesson material.
Gas Laws: Use the paper card sort (or just use the electronic gif) with Card Sort Hacks. Keep the original card sort copy as an answer key. Cut up the paper copy to use as a card sort.
It’s annoying to see that even card sorts are sold on TPT or Etsy. Come on!
Walmart had HotHands on clearance at $0.50 for a two-pack. I bought a bunch for Chemistry labs. The younger kiddos can measure the temperatures of hot and cold packs directly with thermometers. The high school class will do thermochemical labs and use the instant packs for comparison with their results. If one of the teens is miles ahead of the class, he or she can try to devise a hot or cold pack. Now I need a good deal on cold packs, too. I just noticed the hot packs are adhesive backed. I’ll have to watch where the kiddos stick them.
1. Designing a Hand Warmer is intended to AP Chemistry classes, as a project. Make an Instant Cold Pack is easier; most cold packs have urea, ammonium nitrate or calcium ammonium nitrate as ingredients, I like to have commercial products to make comparisons. This version is more of a straight-forward calorimetry lab.
3. Hot & Cold Packs (1987) is a Chemmatters article, which explains the underlying chemical reactions. Hot and Cold Packs tests exothermic and endothermic reactions. My class will compare results with the instant packs. Spoiler alert! The commercial products are both hotter and colder for much longer periods of time. Here is an instant cold pack lab.
My home-school friends are basically done with school for the summer. Many continue reading, gardening, field trips, etc over the summer, at a slower pace. Guess what? The kids start to get bored. Write ideas in craft sticks and save them in a bin. (Add easy ideas such as chalking outside, jumping rope, too. Add chores! The toilet can always be cleaned.) I’m on the hunt for science ideas which are easy and interesting. Many kiddos love a magic trick. Here are a few. Make a stop at the library for a book of magic tricks to try, too!
2. Floating Rice Bottle, like the Straw Through Potato experiment seems like a magic trick.
3. It’s All About Air Pressure uses a cup, water, and an index card. Do this trick outside or over the sink.
4. Baggie and Pencil is sophisticated science. The plastic polymers seal around the pencil.
5. Remote Control Roller is about static electricity, using an aluminum can and a balloon. Do this on a day which is NOT humid. Rib the balloon on your hair until your hair stands up.
I posted Make Your Own Instructional Kits two days ago. I am going more analog than ever this year. Why? There is more and more evidence that kids get too much tech in their instruction and that kiddos are using AI as a crutch (or to cheat). Like you, my goal is for teens to understand and demonstrate their mastery of a topic—not their ability to use AI. Sure, we’ll have the class organize their data on spreadsheets and write summaries with a device. However, I’m going changing my approach.
As an example, there are many Concept Mapping Tools. I’m not using any of them, despite using them in the past. Instead we’re all using index cards. Here is a site with a video explaining the process. I write terms on to index cards. How do these concepts relate to one another? Can you group some of these terms? Why did you select these groupings? Teens tend to put cards into one of these four types of concept maps—especially hierarchical concept maps. I made several sets of index cards for teams of students to use and produce a concept map on the table top—not a screen.
I’m going to be even stricter about devices and enlist parents to help. Even in Co-op, some teens cheat. I plan to insist that lab reports be hand written, not typed. Too many kids can’t resist the siren song of AI. Others are just too free about cutting and pasting material into their report. (I don’t have a problem with kiddo using MLA online to cite their textbook or a website.) My kiddos need more practice writing anyway.
I made the mistake of letting the Advanced Biology class use Google Slides for their presentations. The slide decks were beautiful; the content and understanding was not. If we do any presentations, we’ll use trifold presentation boards instead. I’m going to do more brain-storming this summer to find ways to minimize AI and promote meaningful instruction.
Texas Instruments (TI) has loads of apps for TI 83/84 calculators, which are widely used in math and science classes across the country. Here are some of the apps for Chemistry. Browse the activities and educators tab, too. One of the most useful apps is Science Tools or SciTools. It has unit conversions. I teach the kiddos how to convert before I show them the app in the calculator. The Periodic Table app has information to use when plotting Periodic Trends. (Teens find tables of information to be easier to use than the calculator.)
TI graphing calculators are not intuitive. Downloading or transferring data can be confusing. The easiest method is to use a unit to unit transfer cable which works with TI 83 or TI 84 calculators. Use a mini USB transfer cable for a transfer between TI 84 to TI 84 calculators. (The method in the video is the same for TI 84 calculators.) This process works if one calculator has the desired app and another doesn’t.
I have run into compatibility issues. For example, a TI 83 plus will send to a TI 83; a TI 84 can send to a TI 83–but not vice versa. What if you don’t know someone with a graphing calculator already loaded with apps? You can download data from a laptop to the graphing calculator with a TI Connectivity Kit.
The TI 84 can also use this USB Computer Cable. Be warned! Downloading an app from TI is a production whenever you install programs from the computer. Teens borrow my cable and download games. Once one kiddo has the program, they use the mini-link to transfer apps to each other’s calculators.
Apart from SciTools, my favorite app is the Easy Data app, which is preloaded on TI 84 calculators. As soon as you plug in the probe, the Easy Data software loads and recognizes the probe.
I invest time teaching the Chem class how to convert before introductions SciTools. Most of the time, it’s handy to convert units in the middle of a problem—especially pressure units in gas law problems. When I taught in public school, I had to watch teens to be sure they weren’t playing a game on their calculator—much like they do on their cell phones. I’m prepared to take away calculators or cell phones if they become a problem.
I have GraphNCalc83 app on my iPads. The format looks a bit different on an iPad from the calculator. It is now free! The Chemistry apps have Periodic Table properties, but not SciTools or Easy Data.
Hey! I have held off from writing about graphing calculators for awhile! Summer is a good time to bid on calculators at Good Will. (Frankly, I have had good luck with TI 83 and TI 84 calculators I bought from Good Will, but not those from eBay or Amazon. Try to bid on those which power on and do NOT have any screen marks.)
Why do I like TI 84 models? They are compatible with Vernier’s EasyTemp probes and EasyLink interface. You can connect the EasyTemp probe directly to the TI 84 graphing calculator. The calculator comes with the EasyData software preloaded on the calculator. The EasyLink interface allows a student to connect other Vernier probes, such as the pH probe to the calculator; not all probes connect. Mainly I use the temperature and pH probes for Chemistry classes. I love that my kiddos can use digital probes.
The probes, like the TI 84 calculators are sturdy. One caveat: when the probes are connected they eat batteries. BTW the EasyData software loads on the calculator automatically when a probe connects. It recognizes the probe, too. I think the EasyData quick guide is fairly clear. You might have trouble locating the data collected; it saves data in the STAT file. Most of the time, the teens just record the data from the screen.
The reason I like the TI 84 so much is that my kiddos have a fancy digital thermometer or pH probe right in their hands. We do some calculator exercises in Math and Chemistry, too. I want the home-school students to be familiar with graphing calculators before they go to college.
One of the main reasons I promote STEM so much is to keep home-school families from thinking their kiddos are somehow missing out from a valid science experience. When I taught in private or public schools, I made it my mission to provide as many labs and hands-on activities as possible. When I started to work with Co-ops, I continued to set a minimum of 30 labs per course, with a goal of 50 activities. Yes, we often do two or three hands-on activities or labs per class. Even when I lecture, I still have at least one mini-lab.
Like you, I have heard a great deal of criticism about home-school math and science. I am trying to deflect some of the criticism about science instruction. (Private school teachers get a lot of disparaging remarks about math and science, too.) Ask families with children in public or private schools to tell you how many labs they do in their science classes. You may be surprised. As home-schoolers, we do have to over-deliver.
My mission with this blog is to both encourage you to do science and to find affordable labs and activities. I do my best to locate labs which use household chemicals. However HST usually has specialty chemicals for some of the labs I cite in blog posts. Do as many labs or hands-on activities as you can stomach! Document your efforts. Keep records! Write formal lab reports. Keep a portfolio for your transcript. Let’s combat this misconception that we are somehow short changing our kiddos in science.
Our family is in the middle of our May family and friend blitz. When our son, Fr. Josh, is home we try to visit and host as many people as possible. On our way home from Rock Hall, MD, we stopped at the Marine Corps Museum. The museum has loads of docent-volunteers. You can ask anything you’d like about the planes, guns, or Marine history. Their Distant Learning Program has Mission MRE. Go to the NMMC for the history, rather than STEM. The docents will do their best! However, they do assist scouts with the Aviation Badge and host Virtual Programming. (Scroll down to see Virtual workshops in September for pre-schoolers and K-2 grades.). NMMC has four STEM Videos. Watch the calendar for home-school events and virtual programs. The museum is a great way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation. Get ready for a great experience when you visit.
I have some young friends who adore their American Girl dolls. (BTW I have had a blast sewing outfits.) The little girls meet after Mass in the Fellowship Hall to play with their dolls together. My friend, Jen, is using the American Girl History books to design unit studies for her daughter, Sophie. There is so much literature available for these history studies, such as the Little House series. So fun!
Is there STEM? It turns out there is Doll STEM. I think this is fabulous!
Lottie Dolls has some fun ideas, such as taking the doll with you to a science museum. (I made Sophie an American Heritage Uniform for her doll. She took her in uniform on a field trip.) You could find doll accessories and sew a lab coat. Make a pair of safety goggles. (Yes, she could wear her glasses or sunnies!) Set the doll up at the counter while your daughter does experiments. Better yet, have your little girl do the experiment and make a video for her doll to watch and review when they home-school. (BTW your little girl might need a slate).
