Smithsonian Science Resources

We live near Washington D.C.  Our family has made over 50 visits to D.C.  I spent one summer as a teacher volunteer and stayed in a dorm at Catholic University.  I love to visit D.C.  There is always something fun to see or do.  You could spend an entire day just walking around the Monuments and Memorials.  We park underground at Union Station.  It’s a three mile hike to the Lincoln Memorial from Union Station.  There is a subway from Union to stops near the Smithsonian and another closer to the major monuments or the White House.  Below are some of the resources.

 Did you know there is a hands-on lab, the Draper Smart!Lab in the basement of the American History Museum in Washington D.C.?  Here is more information; I’m still unclear which experiments they’re actually doing.  However, it’s free.  The Smithsonian does have teacher resources.  Here are resources for the Zoo in D.C.  All of the Smithsonian museums and the zoo are free.  Like me, you may come away with some opinions about the quality of the various museums.  Personally, I come away from the zoo feeling like I’ve had a long lecture, rather than seeing loads of animals.  I’ve been disappointed with the American History Museum’s exhibits lately, too. However, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Building Museum, and the National Gallery of Art are treasures.  

The teachers’ guides are scattered everywhere. Here  is the Natural History Educator guide.  Here are Smithsonian Art Guides for teachers.  Here is the  Smithsonian Learning Lab with Webinars.  The educator programs are strangely specific, such as Building Civic Engagement with Postage Stamps.  Here are educator guides for The National Postal Museum, next door to Union Station, in D.C.  Here is the Hirshhorn guide.  Here is the National Museum of American History educator guide.  

The Air and Space Museum has Educator Professional Development, Teacher Innovator Institute, Learning Resources,  There are two Air and Space Museums, one on The Mall, near the White House, and another, the Steven F. Unvarnished-Hazy Center, in Virginia, close to Dulles Airport.  Here are directions to the space museum near Dulles.  If you go to either air and space museum, scedule a group visit with a docent.  The docents are volunteers, often retired members of the military.  These folks are both interested in air and space and interesting.  The docents are volunteers and enhance your experience.

Friday Funday: Candy Bars!

 I will look for different fun labs which do not involve candy, chocolate, or sweets.  However, have you tried candy bar labs?  Come on!  Save a few fun bars for these labs.

1. First is the Candy Bar Density Lab.  Have you taught your kiddos about density?  Look at the lab as a review.  Do Float or Sink with your youngest kiddos.

2. Test mechanical forces with How Strong is Your Chocolate?, with three types of chocolate bars: milk chocolate, another with peanuts, and a third with rice.  You might add dark chocolate to compare with milk chocolate bars.  The lab notes it’s important to compare similarly sized bars.  This engineering activity, Candy Snap!, is similar.

3. How about Candy Bar Plate Activity?  Snack Tectonics has a second lab with graham crackers.

4. Have you tried Candy Bar Geology?  N.B. The lab requires six to ten types of candy bars.  Look for a sale!  Happily, Easter candy is available.  Freeze a bag.  What about Core Samples? The experiment uses Snickers’ bars.  You may as well get another lab from the Candy before the kiddos eat them.

5. Finally, Measure the Speed of Light with chocolate and your microwave.  Your kiddos are going to be delirious with joy!

Friday Funday: M&Ms!

I just realized that posting about candy projects during Lent is problematic.  Sorry.  I gave up sweets and social media.  I do have candy on my mind.  Pin the idea for after Easter.

Kids love candy projects.  Science and math projects are more fun with M&Ms.  

1. Do some M&M Statistics!  We used mini M&Ms.  Use Flinn’s lab, Chi Square Analysis with M&Ms.  Why?  The lab has a chart with the color distributions of different M&M varieties.  M&M Statistics applies to traditional M&Ms.  We find that the distribution of colors in mini bags differs from samples in one large bag.  

2. How about Candy Chromatography?   We like to compare Skittles and M&Ms.  

3. Have you tried Candy Weathering? What about Candium Lab?  Candium is just like Beanium Lab—just more expensive.  Since my Chemistry classes tend to be larger, I use beans.  I taught once with a teacher who used the same candies all day with over 100 students, who weren’t allowed to eat any of the candy.  Booooo!

Friday Funday: Twizzlers!

 Many families teach four days a week and set aside  Fridays to catch up, plan field trips, or just have fun days!  Let’s start this series with Twizzlers!

1. Twizzler DNA is a hit!  Even the high school students like doing this.  I like to use colorful mini marshmallows. You can use Twizzler and Gummy Bears, too.  Both versions are well received.

2. Another fun activity is Learn Binary Code with Twizzlers.  You might want to try Morse Code Bead Bracelets.  You could use Twizzlers cut into small pieces instead of beads.

3. Test Twizzlers with Mechanics of Candy. Yes, gummy worms are nice to test, too. 

4. Another fun experiment is Invisible Licorice.  Look at the glass from different angles.  

5.  Finally, here is the Decay Curve of Twizzlers, if you are explaining isotopes and half-life.  Hey, if I’m buying packages of Twizzlers I want to get good use from them!

Go with the Flow Heart Model

 It’s still February, Heart Health Month, for those of you who use themes when you teach.  Many families do!  I printed out Go with the Flow for one of my students with learning differences, in the Advanced Biology class.  It’s useful for younger kiddos, aged nine and up.  The activity has an answer key.  

Here is a kid-friendly packet with facts, tips, and a heart coloring sheet.  Here is a human heart paper model.  Sadly it isn’t as realistic as Ellen McHenry’s Paper Ear Model.  I did find a you-tube video showing how to make a realistic human heart below.

Blood Flow Through the Heart Paper Model

 I’m going to have to show this activity with pix.  It isn’t an original idea.  Students trace red and blu yarn through a paper plate with a heart diagram.  Can I find the plans?  Nope.  The supples are a copy of the diagram, a paper plate, and red and blue yarn.  I give kids an unlabeled heart diagram.

The kids label the heart and glue it to the paper plate.  Next they poke holes in the heart to thread blue and red yarn through the diagram.  Finally, I like the students to write the steps the blood takes as it passes through the heart and major veins and arteries.  Below are pix, mine and from other examples on the web, including TPT for $1.  I think the images will help convey the project.

 

Heart Model

 The kids made clay models of the heart yesterday.  We switched brands of clay, from Sculpey to Prang.  I like Sculpey because you can bake it.  However, sometimes the clay squares are brittle and unusable.  Prang stays pliable.  The kids reused some clay from the brain models they made earlier.  Don’t try to bake the Prang clay!

Things You Never Knew You Needed

 This is a long running series of things you never knew you needed available at Good Will online.  Once again I am tempted to bid on the suture kit, but cannot justify it.

to myself.

Matter Mapping!

 One activity my Co-op classes do regularly is to make Concept Maps.  Canva has a free concept map maker.  My kiddos have used online apps or templates to make concept maps.  However, I prefer to make and use index cards.  I make up concept map kits when I have a load of vocabulary and related concepts I want to be sure the kids understand.  (See the image below from Biology.)  I’m making up another concept map kit for Matter, which includes terms, examples, phases of matter, and properties of matter.  Here is the list of related terms for Matter, which includes terms such as extensive, extrinsic, intensive, intrinsic, phases, luster, ductility, mass, volume, etc. The list has links for a short video and the slide deck I use with loads of terms.

My list is for Chemistry, next Fall.  I’m making a second kit for the Young Explorers Chemistey and Physics class with terms from their textbook.  I use concept maps as an assessment tool.  How do these terms and concepts relate to each other?  Can you separate them into groups or categories?  When the kids show me their maps, I ask why they placed terms together.  What does conductivity mean?  Which properties are extensive or intensive?  I have blank index cards available.  Sometimes the students want to add terms or create another category.  

Young Explorers Chemistry and Physics: Chapters 1 Matter

 Update: I made a concept map activity with the terms or vocabulary in Chapter 1.  Here is the list of terms.  I use Concept Maps to assess understanding.  I create a set of index cards with the terms.  The kids decide where the cards go.  I ask kids to explain why they put terms together.  For example, the property might go along with words such as color or odor.  I make sets of the index cards for the kids to work in pairs.

In addition to Apologia Chemistry, my plan is to teach Apologia’s Young Explorers’ Chemistry and Physics class.  I’m assembling lessons. Here is the Chapter 1 lesson.  I’m using the textbook, Notebooking Journal, and a few other resources.  We’ll do as many Try this! activities and projects as possible. FYI the Notebooking Journal has a syllabus, extra experiments, copy work, vocabulary puzzles, etc.   For example, the textbook has kids measure Volume by Displacement. I’ll take out the scales and have the kiddos measure mass too.  I have digital scales and stackable, balance beams.  (You can use coins as weights, too.)

The ACS has both Middle School Matter resources and elementary resources, Inquiry in Action: Matter.  Our Co-op teaches Chemistry and Physics to upper elementary-age students.  It pays to have both elementary and middle-school level resources available.  It’s hard to determine in advance the class level.  When I work with kids, I like to include as many hands-on activities as possible.  The textbook recommends doing the activities and projects after reading the textbook.  I’ve found the opposite to be true.  

Another Snow Day? Let’s make crystals!

In our area, it’s snowing again.  After lessons and play outside, plan some fun.  Let’s make crystals!  My two favorite experiments are Salt Crystal Garden (with liquid bluing), Alum Crystals, and Alum Geodes.  Scroll this issue of Celebrating Chemistry: Chemistry Rocks for two experiments: Epsom Salt Needle Crystals and Borax Snowflakes.  Another idea is to make Ghost Crystals with Ghost Crystals, which are water gel crystals or beads, the type which absorb and expand.  I like cubes and spikes, too.  Allow time for the crystals to grow.  Check results once a day.

 

Apologia Chemistry Lessons

 I mentioned earlier that I was organizing my Chemistry materials into 5 E lessons.  I have lessons for 12 Apologia Chemistry modules.  I added links to the slide decks and labs with the lessons.  These are the tools I use to teach content.  The teens read and test outside of class.  Hope these are useful!  

Module #1

Module #2

Module #3: Nomenclature and Module #3: Periodic Table

Module #4

Modules #5 and #6 and Module #5: Chemical Reactions

Modules #7 and #8

Module #9

Module #10

Module #11

Module #12

Blood and Blood Types

 Advanced Biology (Anatomy) is starting the cardiovascular (Module 11) next week.  Two topics are the composition of blood and blood types.  Yes, as a matter of fact, I have written about blood tests before.  We test blood types in Biology and Young Explorers Human Anatomy.  The Eldon kits are expensive.  We’re not repeating these blood tests.  Your family might want to try a kit.

We are doing a simulated blood typing lab.  First, here is the classic simulated blood tests before lab using food coloring, milk, and vinegar.  I purchased Innovating Science Simulated ABO/rH kits for Biology.  I mislaid two kits and reordered more.  Guess what?  This year, we’ll redo the lab.  I’m certain the kids are still fuzzy about ABO/rH compatibility.  

One more idea is to make your own blood sample; here, here, and here are ideas for blood the components in blood.  The last time we made blood samples we used ping pong balls for white blood cells, red water gel beads, and bits of plastic felt for platelets.  Be creative.  

The image above is from an outreach we did with a group of kiddos from Head Start.  (Our church allowed Head Start to use the Knights of Columbus building for classes.). The Human Anatomy and Biology class hosted hands-on stations.  All About Blood  has station ideas.  Get out your stethoscopes!  Plan your own outreach event.  

Ellen McHenry’s Basement

 Ellen McHenry’s Basement Workshop has some excellent Free Downloads: Anatomy T-shirt, the Brain hat, Ear Model, and Eye Model.  But she has fun ideas for a Combustion Engine Model, a Balancing Bird,  and Mineral Crystal Shapes.  She has Songs, too.  This is one of my favorite web resource sites.

Heart Resources

 I just found a circulation activity, The Circulation Game. I don’t plan to play the game, but instead use it to model blood flow. 

Here is Color by Letter to differentiate oxygenated and unoxygenated blood in the heart.  Here is a card sort for blood flow through the heart.  Here is a mnemonic, Try Pulling My Aorta, to remember the order blood flows through valves.  (It has the steps of blood flow in order, too.)  Now, I’m getting excited to start Circulation and Blood!

Heart Models

 Yes, I do wish I had planned to study the heart closer to Valentine’s Day.  But, I didn’t.  However, we’re are starting the cardiovascular system next week.  February is both Black History and American Heart Month.  Here are African-American Trailblazers in Heart Helath, including Charles Richard Drew, the founder of the Blood Bank.  

Back to heart models.  I’ve made a few.  We’re going to make clay models.  Here are instructions.  The Young Explorers Human Anatomy has instructions to make a Graham Cracker Heart.  This was a big hit with the younger kiddos.

Have you tried to make a Functioning Heart with plastic bottles and straws?  We make heart models to map how blood flows through the heart with a Human Heart Template and trace the flow with blue and red yarn.  Look at this Instagram Reel of a Heart Model for more inspiration.

Finally, we have two models of the heart.  Models really help to learn the components and trace circulation.  (BTW, we’ll do the sheep heart dissection.)

Make your own mitosis slides!

 The Biology Corner just posted Root Growth and Cell Division; cell division is part of mitosis. Flinn has Mitosis Slides, too.  Biology Corner suggests both onion and garlic root tips.  Please note that hydrochloride acid (HCl) is required to break bonds and separate cells.  The methylene blue is relatively safe and relatively inexpensive.  Co-op Chemistry instructors will likely have some HCl on hand.  Look at the microscope slides you have on hand.  Any slide with ‘root tip’ should show mitosis or cell division. I’m ambivalent about preparing stained slides.  I invest quite a bit of time just showing kids how to focus or open the diaphragm to allow more light.  I love the idea, but am uncertain how well things will work in practice.