Repost: Drooling Pumpkin Chemistry Lab for Halloween!

 

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought it was a good time to repost this description of a fun chemistry lab you might like to try.

In this Halloween chemistry lab, students create a jack-o-lantern that foams at the mouth! You can use the lab to address NGSS standard MS-PS1-2 as students observe properties of the reactant (hydrogen peroxide) and the bubbly products of the reaction.

I have used the "drooling pumpkin lab" with students in seventh and eighth grade. The class size has usually been about twenty-five students, and there has always been another adult in the room with me. This is helpful for managing materials and spills and to keep an eye on safety because sharp tools are required to carve the pumpkins. Students usually keep their behavior in check because they are excited to do the lab and know that safe behavior is a requirement for participation.

Students work at tables in pairs or small groups. They start by carving their pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern.

Before carving the pumpkins, be sure to put them onto a tray or paper to protect the tables because it gets messy! Suggest to students that positioning the jack-o-lantern's grin lower on the pumpkin will help the reactants flow out of its mouth. (After carving the pumpkins, you will have lots of seeds, so you could ask parents ahead of time if they would like to take some home to roast in the oven.) Depending on how much time you have with students, carving the pumpkins alone can take a full class period.

The reaction used to create the foam that oozes out of the jack-o-lantern's mouth is the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, a liquid easily found in solution at pharmacies. Yeast is used as a catalyst in the reaction, so this is a good opportunity to teach students how a catalyst does not take part in the reaction but merely helps it happen. (I found a one-pound bag of yeast online and stored it in the freezer for many years.)

To activate the yeast, student groups mix a few tablespoons of yeast with a few tablespoons of lukewarm water in a small container and let it sit for about 5 minutes, forming a paste. Meanwhile, students pour about 1 cup of hydrogen peroxide solution into another small container and mix in a few drops of dish detergent. (I recommend using an unscented soap for students sensitive to smells.) The dish detergent will capture the bubbles produced by the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, creating a foam.

Students lower the container of hydrogen peroxide solution with dish detergent into the jack-o-lantern, add the yeast paste, and stir. Soon, the reactants flow out of the pumpkin's mouth, causing it to drool! In some cases, positioning the container of hydrogen peroxide close to the jack-o-lantern's mouth can help students get this effect.

So, where did the bubbles come from? Yeast speeds up the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide into hydrogen and oxygen, and these gases are captured by the soap, creating the foam. Students can easily see that a chemical reaction has occurred!

If you are interested in other fun chemistry labs, you might like this blogpost on making "gel worms":

https://www.scientificcreative.com/2022/05/polymer-lab-gel-worms.html

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Introduce Science Vocabulary with Creative and Engaging Activities

In science class, students need to understand lots of unfamiliar vocabulary words that may leave them feeling confused. Introducing some of these words at the beginning of a unit can help your students’ comprehension of the material and boost their confidence. Through playing games, asking students to illustrate new words, and having students find connections between different terms, you can help your students feel more comfortable with new scientific terms. 

One vocabulary game that my students enjoyed is charades. It plays on different intelligences than other science activities, so in addition to teaching science vocabulary, the game motivates some students who might be less engaged with other approaches. Another game we played is similar to charades but involves drawing rather than acting. An earlier blogpost I wrote has more details on these games:

Low-Prep Games for Teaching Vocabulary

After reviewing new vocabulary words, you can ask students to illustrate the words in some way. By doing this, you can create a colorful display of student work that also serves to remind students of the meaning of challenging science vocabulary. Here is a link to a blogpost that explains more about illustrating words related to plant cell organelles:

Illustrating Science Vocabulary: Plant Cell Organelles

Hexagonal thinking is an approach to teaching new terms that was created by Betsy Potash. Her lessons mostly center around language arts, but this technique can also be applied to teaching vocabulary in other subjects, including science. Hexagonal thinking involves working in a group to discuss how words in a list relate to one another. Of course, in order to discover connections between the words, students need to understand the definitions of these words. Hexagonal thinking can be used to introduce a unit or to provide a summary after a topic has been covered. To learn more about hexagonal thinking, you can read this blogpost:

Hexagonal Thinking:

Connections and Discussion in Science Class

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Back-to-School Activities for Building Classroom Community

In the first days of school, you may want to select activities that help build community in your class as students ease back into academic life. I will share several such activities that my students have enjoyed in the past. 

A very simple activity is to give students Venn diagrams to complete about themselves. This can be done with student pairs, as with deskmates, or with groups of three using a three-circle Venn diagram. It helps to brainstorm with the class some categories of information that could be written in the Venn diagrams, such as hobbies, talents, sports, music, family members, pets, and favorites: foods, colors, animals, places, seasons, weather. As students fill out the Venn diagram, they get to know each other better and find some things they have in common. A blogpost I wrote earlier has more details about using Venn diagrams in the classroom:

Classroom Icebreaker / Getting to Know You Activity: Venn Diagrams

A popular game I have used is Two Truths and a Lie. Each member of the class, including the teacher, writes their name along with two true facts and one lie about themself. The teacher reads each paper, and everyone guesses which is the lie before the student reveals the correct answer. Students love this game because they see how much they already know about each other while being surprised by things they never knew about their friends! It also provides new students with an opportunity to introduce themselves to their classmates. One year I used this game to reveal to my class that I was pregnant!

To beautify your classroom with student art at the beginning of the school year, have them create collages about themselves using images and words from magazines. Making collages encourages students to learn more about their classmates' interests and style. As they work, they talk about the images and words they are using and help one another find pictures in the magazines. This activity takes a little preparation, but asking parents and other staff members for magazine donations makes it fairly easy. Here is a link to an earlier blogpost about making collages:

Beginning of the School Year Activity: Decorate Room with Student Collages

A game similar to Two Truths and a Lie is Snowball Fight. In this game, everyone writes three true things about themself but omits their name. After crumpling up the paper, the class has a "snowball fight" for about ten seconds (or longer). Everyone then picks up a piece of paper and opens it. You may have students walk around the room and find the person who wrote their paper. Another variation is to ask students to take turns reading their papers aloud as the entire class attempts to guess who wrote it. To help students keep control of their bodies during the snowball fight, you can make a rule that students need to be touching their chair or desk as they throw their snowballs. It's helpful to know your students a bit before trying this game to be sure that students can handle the snowball fight.

One last activity I will mention can be used to preview vocabulary for a coming unit while decorating the classroom with student art. This involves giving groups of students vocabulary words to illustrate. Within the group, individual students can choose which word to draw so long as the group includes all of the words. Here is a link to a blogpost I wrote about this activity:

Illustrating Science Vocabulary: 

Plant Cell Organelles

I hope these activities give you some ideas for beginning the school year, and I hope that you have a great first week of school!

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Low-Stress Summer Lesson Planning: Start with the Fun Stuff!

It's so important for teachers to take a break and recharge over the summer so they can return refreshed for the new school year. As we all know, it's also necessary to do some planning before school starts up again. A strategy I discovered to ease back into prepping lessons is to begin with the fun stuff. Coincidentally, this planning needs to be done first anyway!

Planning fun events and activities can be enjoyable and make you look forward to the upcoming school year. For me, the "fun stuff" includes field trips and projects that connect students with parts of our community outside of the classroom. 

Some field trips that are popular with students can get booked quickly, and this is the perfect excuse to work on this task first! In San Diego, one popular excursion is a field trip to the tide pools at Cabrillo National Monument. Once the trips open up on their website, they go like hot concert tickets. (Well, almost!) These trips are usually available to book beginning in mid-to-late August.

Another project that can might entice you to get a head start on your lesson planning is the Future City Competition for students in grades six, seven, and eight.

In the Future City Competition, students are challenged to imagine and design sustainable cities of the future. (The competition itself is not required.) Every year a new theme is chosen that relates to an issue currently in the news or, as I have found, one that soon after becomes a headline. I have found that participating in the Future City project has given my students and me insights into pressing issues around sustainability.

Another great way to connect students with the greater world beyond the classroom is through service learning experiences. It can be helpful to start making connections over the summer.

As a science teacher, you may want to give your students the opportunity to volunteer at a community garden or nature preserve. There are many possibilities for homeroom and other classes, too.

Beginning your summer lesson planning with "the fun stuff", like field trips and special projects, can make the planning seem less like work. You'll be getting yourself ahead in the game and enjoying the process, too! Sometimes it's just the thing you need to get yourself started in preparing for the school year ahead.

For those who live in San Diego, here is a link to the science education programs Cabrillo National Monument:

Cabrillo National Monument: Science Programs

This is a link to an earlier blogpost about exploring the tide pools at Cabrillo National Monument:

It's Tide Pool Season in California!

If you are interested in learning more about the Future City Competition, see my previous blogpost:

Students Explore Engineering and Sustainability through the Future City Competition

Link to Future City Competition website:

Future City Competition

For more service learning ideas and to see how it can benefit students, see this previous blogpost:

Students Give Back with Service Learning

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A Trip to Muir Woods

 

While on vacation in San Francisco, my family took a short drive to Muir Woods National Monument. We were surprised to find such tranquility so close to the busy city.

Muir Woods is best known for the towering coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) trees that made us feel tiny by comparison.

There were multiple other visitors at Muir Woods, but many times we found that we had the trail to ourselves. This may be because we visited the park on a weekday in the fall.  Because it was autumn, we caught a hint of fall foliage, something we sometimes miss from our days living on the East Coast.

Another surprise and benefit to visiting Muir Woods in the late fall was seeing clusters of little red ladybugs huddled together in preparation for the winter.

You can see these clusters of ladybugs beginning in late fall and continuing into early spring. They stay close to each other to keep warm and find a mate. The ladybugs can easily be found on wooden fence posts on the Fern Creek and Bootjack Trails.

We often enjoy attending guided walks when we visit a national park. The guided walk at Muir Woods lead by a volunteer was very informative and something I would recommend.

My daughter was able to add to her collection of Junior Ranger badges by completing an activity booklet and taking a pledge to protect all national parks, continue  learning about them, and to share her knowledge with others.

Our family thoroughly enjoyed our time in San Francisco, and Muir Woods is definitely a spot we would all like to return to one day.

Here is a link to the Muir Woods National Monument website:

National Park Service: Muir Woods National Monument

If you plan to go to San Francisco and are interested in other places to visit, check out this blogpost about the California Academy of Sciences:

Teaching Resources from the California Academy of Sciences

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Summertime Science: Garden Plant Families

 

Who doesn’t love their produce garden-fresh? One of the most satisfying endeavors for me personally is growing and harvesting food in my garden. Picking something right off the plant to enjoy myself or share with others is very rewarding. I enjoy the process of supporting the plants’ growth, and I appreciate understanding how each of my plants is related to the other wild and cultivated plants in our world.

I am fortunate to have the privilege of tending a plot in our local community garden. Recently I planted a couple of cherry tomato seedlings. You may know that tomatoes are part of the nightshade family (Solanaceae). If you compare the flowers of a tomato plant with those of a wild nightshade, you will notice similarities.

Tomato Plant Flowers

Nightshade Flowers

Flowers of both the garden tomato and the wild nightshade are perfect, or bisexual, flowers. They are star-shaped with five petals, and at the center, fused anthers (male part) surround the style (female part). Other members of the nightshade family that you may see in your garden include bell and hot peppers, eggplant, and potato.

Some of the other plants now in bloom are members of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae). In addition to gourds, this plant family includes pumpkins, squash, melons, and cucumbers.

Cucumber Blossom

Squash Blossom

A wild member of the gourd family native to Southern California is wild cucumber. Despite its name, it's not edible. The fruit is prickly and toxic!

Wild Cucumber (Marah macrocarpa)

Members of the gourd family typically have flowers with five fused petals. Flowers are unisexual, meaning that each flower has either male parts or female parts. It can be fun to hand pollinate these flowers. If you are interested in trying hand pollination in your garden, there is information about this in an earlier blogpost: 

Summertime Science in the Garden: Pollination

One of the showier flowers currently in bloom is the sweet pea.

Sweet Pea Flowers

My Daughter with Sweet Pea Flower Bouquet 

Sweet peas are members of the bean family, or Fabaceae. Flowers are bisexual with five petals. They have bilateral symmetry, with one large petal at the top and four smaller ones below. Green beans and other kinds of beans, peas, lentils, and peanuts belong to this family. So do many wild plants, including acacia, locust trees, and lupines. 

Lupine, Member of the Bean Family

If you have the chance, I highly recommend spending some time in a garden this summer!

If you would like to read other blogposts related to exploring science in the garden, see these blogposts:

Springtime Science in the Garden: Plant "Cousins" and a Baby Skunk!

Summertime Science in the Garden: Pollination

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Ideas for End-of-School-Year Activities

 

The end of the school year is an exciting time but also the most challenging time to hold students' attention. Who could blame students for wishing their summer vacation would only come sooner? Teachers are looking forward to it, too! 

Luckily, the end of the school year is also a time when teachers and students feel less pressed to delve into new material and can instead engage in activities that focus on the classroom community. I'll offer a few suggestions here for activities that have worked well with my students in the past.

Playing games is a fun way to review academic material. In a previous blogpost, I described a couple of games you can use for teaching vocabulary. Below is a link:

Low-Prep Games for Teaching Vocabulary

Bringing an easy art activity into the classroom is another idea. If you have a collection of magazines or can get donations, you can have students make collages about themselves. I described this in a previous blogpost as a beginning-of-the-year activity, but I found it works nicely as and end-of-the-year project as well. Here's a link:

Decorate Room with Student Collages

Service learning activities could take some preparation but can also be done simply by teaming up with a teacher of students in lower grades. For ideas of service learning activities, follow this link:

Students Give Back with Service Learning

One simple yet universally enjoyable activity is going outdoors for a walk. If you have a park or other suitable area close to your school, you could include a picnic or snack break. A walk could have the sole purpose of providing time for teachers and students to connect, but it could also be used to highlight material taught earlier in the school year. For more information on using nature walks as an educational tool, follow the link below:

Get Out of the Classroom and onto the Trail!

Whatever you choose to do, aim to provide yourself and your students with enjoyable experiences. There is always so much going on at the end of the school year, but having quality time together as a class is a nice way to close out the school year.

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Get Out of the Classroom and onto the Trail!

 

As the weather gets nicer, and students begin to feel a bit trapped being indoors, it can be nice to take a break for a day and go outside on a nature walk. 

When I taught at the Museum School in San Diego, we were fortunate to have a trail within walking distance. We also took field trips to local nature preserves. It required some extra effort but was always well worth it!

A nature walk can provide a brief pause from standards-based academics. The natural learning and unexpected discoveries that take place have value in themselves, as does the connection students can form with the natural world. This connection can plant seeds of a lifelong curiosity about ecosystems.

Some students were lucky to catch a glimpse of a gray fox!

Nature walks can also be used to highlight concepts being explored in class. Erosion, natural selection, invasive species, human impact, and biotic vs. abiotic factors are examples of topics that can be reinforced while on the trail. 

At times I used a walk as a stand-alone activity. Other times I used it as a step in guiding the class to generate a question for a field study. In both cases, I prepared students by teaching them about the plants they might see on the trail, and during the walk I asked that they complete a simple observations sheet to encourage them to closely study their surroundings.

One of the most valuable aspects of getting students outdoors and on the trail is to allow them a little unstructured time in nature. This provides us all with an opportunity to get to know one another a little better.

 

If you are interested in another opportunity for outdoor learning, follow this link to my blogpost about a citizen science project on pollinators:

Get Outdoors with Citizen Science! The Great Sunflower Project

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Easy and Fun pH Lab

 

A simple pH lab is fun and easy to prepare. All you need are pH paper (purchased online), water (preferably distilled ), small containers, and a collection of household substances to test. Use this lab when teaching MS-PS1-2. Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred. 

The lab procedure is simple. Pour a small amount of a water-based liquid into a container. You can test dry substances like baking soda by mixing them with water. Dip in the pH paper, and watch for a color change.

Students observe a color change when the pH indicator in the pH paper reacts with the substance being tested. After dipping the pH paper into the substance, the color of the paper is matched to a color chart that comes with the pH paper. 

You can invite students to bring to class substances that they would like to test. Here are examples of some that you might provide for students:

* Vinegar

* Rainwater

* Tap water

* Salt

* Baking soda

* Shampoo

* Borax

* Seltzer water

* Lemon juice

* Apple juice

I like the element of choice in this lab as students are free to test the substances that interest them the most. The teacher provides a collection of substances, adds any that students bring in from home, and then asks students to select a certain number to test. I required five. Students record their results on a simple data sheet. I did this lab at home with my eleven-year-old daughter just for fun, and she created her own data sheet.

Often a few students want to test their own spit. When I did the lab at home with my daughter, this was the first thing she wanted to try! If you choose to indulge your students' curiosity, you could give them a pH paper or two to take home.

When students have finished their tests, you can have them discuss their results. Which substances were acidic, basic, and neutral? Did students who tested the same substances get the same results? What might cause variation in their results? Do they notice any common properties of the acids? Did anyone test the pH of a mixture of more than one substance? If no one tried mixing an acid with a base, have someone try this to see the result.

This pH lab takes little set-up on the teacher's part. It's a fun way for students to become more familiar with the concept of pH and observe a color change in a chemical reaction.

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