Get Outdoors with Citizen Science! The Great Sunflower Project

 

I discovered a simple yet engaging project that gets students and families outside and allows them to participate in authentic scientific research. The Great Sunflower Project is a citizen science activity in which students and volunteers nationwide observe flowers and record information about the pollinators that visit them. The data that is collected is entered on the project's website and then compiled and used to create maps showing the abundance of pollinators in different areas across the United States.

Data collection for The Great Sunflower Project can happen whenever pollinators are active. Because April is Citizen Science Month, and Earth Day is in April, I chose to have students do this project to celebrate Earth Day. Everyone seems to enjoy getting outside in spring when the weather is getting warmer. 

To prepare students for the project, I created a Google slideshow with some photos of pollinators listed on The Great Sunflower Project data sheet. These included bumblebees, honey bees, and carpenter bees. As I shared the slideshow with the class, I pointed out specific traits of the pollinators that would help to identify them. After receiving this "training", students took a quiz in which they had to identify pollinators from photographs.

The minimum time for observing flowers required by The Great Sunflower Project is five minutes. When doing this project with my middle school students, I asked them to spend between five and fifteen minutes on data collection, depending on the dynamics of the class and how much time was available to us. This may seem like a very short period of time, but staying focused on observations can be very challenging! After seeing students struggle with this in the past, I decided to reinforce the importance and challenge of staying focused on the flowers during the observation time. If you try this with your own students or children, don't be surprised if a few begin to wander a bit from their posts or perhaps need gentle reminders to watch the flowers for pollinators.  

If you are interested in learning more about The Great Sunflower Project, here is a link to a short video and description of the project:

https://www.greatsunflower.org/node/1000010

Here is a link to register:

https://www.greatsunflower.org/user/register

Update: When my students tried to enter data in April, 2022, we noticed that the website was down for a couple of days. I don't know if this happens frequently or not. If you plan to do this project with your students or family, just be aware of this. Despite the delay, students were motivated to contribute their data to a nationwide project!

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Slime: Vacation Fun with Polymers!

My daughter is passionate about slime. Although the mess definitely causes some controversy in our home, as a science teacher who encourages creativity, it would be hard not to support her ventures. We decided that the glitter slime still stuck to the wall, the bits of slime that found their way onto the floor, and the general mess that comes with creating slime are all worth the trouble for the lessons she gets about chemistry and designing informal experiments. She is also beginning to learn the importance of a thorough clean-up!

                     

My daughter’s interest in slime provides a great excuse to have a discussion about polymers. Do you know where slime gets its stretchiness? Slime is a polymer, as are common plastics. Polymers are complex molecules consisting of chains of simpler molecules, called monomers.

These long polymer chains help give slime its prized stretchiness. Glue, a common slime ingredient, itself contains a polymer called polyvinyl acetate. Kids mix glue with a reactant such as borax that causes the polymer chains to stick together, a chemical process called crosslinking. As the long polymer chains in the glue stick together, this creates a thicker substance- slime!

We are currently on Spring Break, and my daughter is devoting much of her time and resources to experimenting with new slime recipes and finding the best combinations of ingredients. Her birthday money has gone towards glue, shampoo, and peel-off face mask. I’ll be interested to see what new combinations she comes up with!

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