More light exploration (stained glass art project)

Our school is lucky enough to be housed by a church that has beautiful stained glass windows.   Sometimes we walk upstairs to the church and sit in the sanctuary, because it's nice to stretch our legs for the walk upstairs, and with the light reflecting through the predominately blue and purple glass it is incredibly peaceful,  and nice to have a few quiet moments together on moody, antsy days.
Once a year (or sometimes more) we take a "field trip" to the church upstairs specifically to look at the stained glass. On the best days, like today, when there is a little sun, we can stretch out our hands and see the colored shapes cast on them by the sun shining through the windows.  We can get up close to the glass and admire it, and peer through at the yellow, or green, or purple world outside the colored windows.  We can admire the great height of the glass, and the beauty.  There is a lot to be seen on a trip to an empty church.

 Even the boys are fascinated by the stained glass.

After there has been plenty of time to look, admire, and explore, we head back down stairs.  

We get a little fine motor practice in cutting up tissue paper into small shapes...

Decorate strips of clear contact paper with the tissue paper... (some children discovered that if you put one piece of tissue paper over another it would make a new color)...

... and stick it to our own windows to enjoy just a little taste of beauty of the church in our own room. 

In other news, we added old CDs to our cave of wonders which, when the flashlights were on them, created rainbows in the cave!  

Cave of Wonders

Inspired by the fantastic Teacher Tom and his blog entry on a "light and dark den,"  I started begging my parents for dark colored sheets and disco balls for my vision of how I could replicate this in someway.   When I finally had a few sheets and had rounded up some Christmas bulbs that were quite reminiscent of disco balls (and one "modern" light disco ball to be used at a later date), I assembled this cave under the train table.  I had to leave the little hole in the front so that I can see what is going on in there, for safety reasons and because of regulations.

Inside there were a slew of pillows, three mini disco balls attached to the underside of the table in a way conducive to spinning, some glow in the dark stars and moons on the underside of the table (also a parent donation), and three flashlights.

They were mesmerized by the light reflecting off the mirrored balls....

... and the patterns made on the walls, "ceiling," and floor....

They made shadows on the wall and told ghost stories.

Stories about kid- eating bears...

and even a scary story about "bloody bones" passed down from Dad.

And when it was time for lunch, they begged for more time in the cave, and were only convinced to leave with promises of doing it again this after noon and the next day.

It was a place of discovery, a place to bond, a place to escape, and a place to enjoy a little bit of quiet.

The kids called it a "cave," and I jokingly called it a "cave of wonders,"  but that is what stuck with them, and we cannot wait to spend more time in the cave of wonders tomorrow.  :-)

ice, failure, spiders, and pests

Do you ever have times when the "lesson" you planned for a paticular day completely flops?  It doesn't happen to me very often, but whenever it does I am always surprised that something ALWAYS emerges from that failure.
Today, I had planned a big ice activity (I will spare all of the details until this project is successful).   We put containers with water outside and I asked for a hypothesis about what would happen.  There were two answers:  1. The water would evaporate  and 2.  It would turn into ice.  However, when we checked it an hour and a half later NOTHING had happened, (although the children astutely observed that the water got really cold).  The reason?  The temperature outside was 33 degrees.  SERIOUSLY?  33 DEGREES?  I was frustrated.  Why didn't it freeze, Miss Elizabeth?  Well, it seems it is not quite cold enough outside.  It feels cold to us!  Yes, it is cold but it needs to be a little colder, 32 degrees, to freeze, and I just checked the thermometer and it is 33 degrees.  Do you think we should leave it overnight and see if it freezes?  YES!!
Surprisingly, they weren't frustrated by this, and didn't seem to mind waiting until tomorrow.

We went back inside and play resumed as usual.  I set to work hanging clothes line across the ceiling to hang pictures up on.  Apparently, according to "the regs" I have too much art on the walls- only "20% of the wall can have paper on it,"  so as a solution, and so that we can still have children's art work in the room,  I am hanging some on the ceiling.

*instructions for the art on the front row can be found here, and for the back row here.

What are you doing, Miss Elizabeth?  Hanging some rope.  For what? To hang paintings.  Why? To decorate our room and display your art work.  Can we decorate our room? If you want to.  What do you need? Yarn.

So I gave them some yarn, and they started "decorating" the area where the blocks are kept.  It started out as just strands of yarn here and there, but eventually they decided to make a "spider web."  

As you can see they worked very diligently, both boys and girls together.  

We left it up for the entirety of the day.  They enjoyed adding to it and crawling under and over the strings.  

The spider web did its job and captured a pest!

A little spider even slept in the web during nap time.  (You can see the blue cot in the corner of this photo).  

The spider also got our table.  The kids thought it was interesting that the table was round, but the spider web was square because of the legs.  

All and all it was a good day.  They also played limbo and jump rope with the string.  So I guess the moral of the story not to fear when my plans don't work out, the children will always find something else to learn from.  

A big clean mess

My class has been begging to do cabbage juice experiments ever since we did the project a week ago.  However, I can't really take the smell of cabbage anymore.  It literally has always turned my stomach.  I think it is because I grew up in a rural area and so when I smell cabbage I think of the rotting cabbage field smell?  Anyway, on to more important things.  

Since cabbage juice is out for at least 3 months (and hopefully they will stop asking by then), I thought a little free experimenting was in order.  So today I loaded up our table with acids and bases:  Lemons (cut in half), medium grape fruits (cut in quarters), baking soda, alka seltzer tablets, dish soap, and water. With these things, surely any child can create a potion to suit their fancy, and as a matter of fact they made not one, but at least 5 each.  

Lemons are actually the most acidic citrus fruit followed by limes and the grapefruit.  The beautiful thing about the grapefruit is that they are so easy to squeeze and have a ton of juice in them. The reason for giving them the actual fruit is that, to me, it makes it more real when they actually see it coming out of the fruit.  Squeezing also slows them down, so in theory they are able to take in more of what is happening, and also is a great motor exercise; They really have to use those little hand muscles on the lemons!

They went through many grapefruit and lemons in this experiment. 

I had assumed that they would be more likely to use lemons, since they would yield a greater reaction but they seemed to prefer the grapefruit for two reasons. First, the grapefruit (as I said earlier) were easier to squeeze juice from, and second, like most 4 year olds they have small "boo-boos" on their hands and they found that the grapefruit didn't sting their boo-boos like the lemon did.  


In any case, they were able to create a wide variety of reactions (and "potions").  

This was probably one of the best reactions we had: a little baking soda, some soap and a big squeeze of lemon, it eventually overflowed the container.

I think this one had three or four alka seltzer, water, soap, baking soda, and maybe a pinch of grapefruit juice

One little girl was working on a cup that was not really reacting beyond a few bubbles no matter how many alka seltzer tablets she put in.  You can see here that when she dumped it on a top the alka seltzer were still whole, protected in a layer of baking soda and soap.  (In this mixture there was only water, dish soap, baking soda and alka seltzer).

You can see that once she added lemon juice several things began to happen: the baking soda bubbled, the alka seltzer began to dissolve, and swirling patterns emerged in the liquid resulting from the reactions.

One child put an alka seltzer tablet on the grapefruit and on the lemon and then gave them each a little squeeze.  The one on the lemon dissolved first, as you might imagine.  


After they had successfully used all available cups and containers  and neutralized almost everything, they were content to just mix their potions with each other, pouring them back and forth and adding water and baking soda, (the only things left from the 2 dozen lemons and dozen grapefruit), stirring, and pouring some more.  To get water, by the way, they used turkey basters instead of pipettes- allowing them to use more at once.  The basters also became instrumental in transferring liquids between cups for them and doubled as stirring utensils.  I got this idea from somebody's   blog but I cannot remember to whom the blog belonged, so if it belonged to you- let me know and I will link you to this entry.  


They really enjoyed this experiment, (although maybe not quite as much as cabbage juice).  One child did ask me if they could have the vinegar (remembering the power of the vinegar from the last experiment, no doubt).  However, because vinegar is much better suited for outdoors science projects, and because we were out of vinegar thanks to the cabbage project, they made do with the lemon juice.  


**Another really awesome thing about this project is that between the lemon, baking soda and soap, it makes any room smell amazing! It is a welcome change from cabbage juice.  Those three ingredients are also great for cleaning, so the table and floor that the project is on will clean up beautifully- it actually took  a couple of stains off the table that ordinarily I would use Commet for when the kids weren't around.  :-)

The worst smelling, best fun ever

I have a student that often tells me that the activities that we do are the "best ever." The day I let them go swimming in shaving cream was the "best ever," the day we spray painted snow for the first time was the "best ever," and the project I am about to tell you about was "REALLY the best ever."  At least that's what I am told.  
Inspired by an article by Bev Bos I set about preparing for a huge smelly purple cabbage juice experience.  

The inside of a cabbage is amazingly beautiful!

The first thing I did (as instructed by Bev Bos) was to chop 4 purple cabbages into medium pieces and boil it in two huge kitchen pots with water a few inches away from the brim.  

After the cabbage was floppy and the juice a very dark purple, I strained both pots into large bowls.  I combined the floppy cabbage into one of the soup pots and boiled it again.  I probably could have done this one more time before discarding the cabbage, but at this point I was up to my elbows in cabbage juice.  

I then used a funnel to transfer it to every available pitcher and jug we had in the kitchen. 

I haven't bothered to do the actual conversion to see how many gallons of cabbage juice there were exactly- but there were at least 10 (there are more jugs on the second level of the cart shown above).  The cabbage juice sat in my class overnight like this for use the next day.  To my knowledge this did not make it smell any better or worse than it did right out of the pot.  

I had over 40 plastic dixie cups set out with a tablespoon of lemon juice in each and over 40 paper dixie cups set out with a tablespoon of baking soda in each.  I also had 14 cups, (for 7 children that day), half full of cabbage juice set out.  THIS WAS NOT ENOUGH, and would have been even more insufficient if the 10 children that is normal for my class had been there.  They went through the cups of baking soda and lemon juice in about ten minutes and the cabbage juice cups in about half an hour.  It was an uphill battle from the ten minute mark on to keep the children supplied with all the baking soda and lemon juice they needed.  In addition to needing cabbage juice refills at the half hour mark, we ran out of the GALLON of lemon juice that we had and so, had to improvise with vinegar.  This was a good substitute, but vinegar, as you might imagine, is slightly more reactive with the baking soda than the lemon juice was.  It became a huge "who can make their cup overflow- competition,"  which was fine.  In the end we went through about a pound and a half of baking soda, a gallon of lemon juice, a gallon of vinegar, and hundreds of tiny cups. However, it was all worth it.  

Here are some pictures I managed to take before the shortages: 

You can see both the colors and some of the reactions from these pictures although they worked up some much more intense reactions.  As you probably could have surmised, when coming in contact with an acid the cabbage juice becomes bright pink red, with a base it become blue and then green because cabbage is an natural indicator.  The colors are really stunning.  

I had one little girl who came late, after everyone was done, and luckily I had set aside enough vinegar, baking soda, and cabbage juice for her to do the experiment.  She did this differently than any of the other children;  All of them, for the most part, spent their time dumping baking soda and vinegar/lemon juice into the cabbage juice, but she started by putting cabbage juice into the little cups that held either baking soda or vinegar.  

Hopefully you can tell, despite the poor quality of this picture, that she ended up with cups of bright pink and cups of dark green.  She then dumped them all back into the big cup and asked me to refill her little cups with vinegar and baking soda, which I did, and then dumped the now purple liquid in her cup back into each small one.  This time the vinegar cups were a magenta and the baking soda cups a dark indigo.  She repeated this procedure a few times before going the route all the other children did in the end- overflowing her cups.  

Needless to say the children were completely in love with this experiment.  They learned and observed so much.  I fully anticipate to be asked when we are doing this again for at least a month.  We will do it sometime again, but my nose needs a break from the smell of cabbage and this time I will know to have out at least a couple hundred cups of baking soda and lemon juice before starting.  

At the end of the day each child went home with a reused mini water bottle full of cabbage juice, and a note explaining to parents what this bad smelling drink was and what to do with it.  I know of at least two children who went home last night and relived the excitement of the cabbage juice with their parents and siblings in the kitchen, and hopefully more of them will tonight and tomorrow.  

If you are attempting this in the full scale project version some words of advice:

*Have a lot of materials in "unlimited quantities" prepared for them.  They fly through the supplies. 

*Double line several trash cans to have near the project site to make clean up easy

*Have a lot of towels prepared to clean up overflow

*Have as many adults as possible to help keep things running smoothly.  (We did this with two adults and really needed at least two more)

*Be prepared for your classroom to smell of cabbage juice the next day and be prepared with the appropriate equiptment

Enjoy!