Every year the 5th graders attend Science Camp at a local park, and the teachers each choose a station to teach – over and over and over, 8 times over 2 days. So keeping it fun for you, and the students is important. Okay, really keeping myself entertained was my primary goal. My partner teacher and I taught about solute, solvent, and solutions via bubbles.
Sounds fun right, the kids got to make a bubbles solution and be ‘mad scientists’ experimenting with what made the best bubble solution for them. In the process, the students made ‘bubble wands’ out of pipe cleaners. And in the name of keeping myself entertained, and seeing exactly what I could make kids do, I made them repeat after me – before creating their wands – “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Yeah, nothing to do with science, but totally fun to do. I was impressed that a few students could ‘Name That Movie’.
Then there was some ADHD moment early on when we talked about separating water and salt which led to a tale of Gilligan’s Island. So I went into a whole shpeil about this show just to say that if you boil salt water the result will be salt (as the water evaporates). Yeah, I had a good time. Hope other did as well!
Nowa Techie 