Drooling Pumpkin Chemistry Lab for Halloween

 

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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Classroom Icebreaker / Getting to Know You Activity: Venn Diagrams

Venn diagrams can be used as an icebreaker to help students get acquainted at the beginning of the school year. I have also used Venn diagrams as a team-building activity when beginning a group project. Venn diagrams are a simple, low-prep yet effective way to help your students get to know one another.

The format is very simple. You can use a two-circle Venn diagram for pairs or a three-circle Venn diagram for groups of three. When beginning a group project with teams larger than three students, you can break students into smaller groups and pairs. Whether I plan to have students work with a partner or in a small group, I always prepare a few copies of the alternative form of the Venn diagram in case the number of students present that day is not divisible by two/three.

After I tried having students draw the Venn diagrams themselves, I found that giving them copies of pre-made Venn diagrams works best because it is tricky to draw intersecting circles with spaces large enough to write. I have either drawn the circles myself to photocopy or found Venn diagrams online.

To begin the activity, ask each student to write his/her/their name just outside of one of the circles. Partners and groups of three talk about themselves- their interests, families, backgrounds, likes, and dislikes. In the space where the circles intersect, they write the things they have in common. Students note ways in which they are unique in the area where the circles don’t intersect.

Keep in mind that some students will begin conversing without much prompting, while others will need a little support. It can help to write suggested topics (favorite foods, hobbies, talents, number of siblings, pets, etc.) on the board and circle around to prompt students as they work.

When students finish, you may want to have them share with the class what they have learned about one another. I often ask pairs and groups to share one way in which they are alike, and one thing that made each student unique.

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

At the beginning of the school year, two common priorities for teachers are classroom decor and getting to know their students. One beginning of the school year activity I have used does both of these things. 

The simple activity of having students make collages that express their personalities was shared with me by Ann Davis, who at the time was a parent of one of my students and working towards a Masters in Expressive Arts Therapy. My students and I were fortunate to benefit from her enriching activities, which helped students reflect, build self-esteem, and connect with one another. The collage activity she taught me is one I started using at the beginning of the school year. It invites students to express their individuality, and in doing so, provides an opportunity for members of the classroom community get to know one another better. 

To prepare for making collages, I begin collecting magazines and other paper media with a variety of images. Emailing parents and asking students to bring in magazines is very helpful. I put out a box or other container to collect the magazines as they come in. Be sure to preview donated magazines before making them available to students though- one year I got a donation of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue! Once you have have a good collection of magazines, some cardstock paper, glue, and scissors (optional), you are ready to begin making collages.

With all of the materials available to students, I let them peruse the magazines to look for images that reflect their personalities and preferences. They find images of things they like to do, their favorite foods, pop culture of interest to them, places they have been or dream of traveling to, and other favorite things.

Students may rip or cut images, and I suggest to them that ripping the paper creates a nice transition between two images in a collage. Students sometimes choose to add words and phrases that they like. They “sign” their collages by spelling their names using letters found in the magazine text. 

Once the collages are done, give them time to dry before putting them in a pile so that they don’t stick together. I have done this activity right before a prep period so that collages can be left on student desks, or I dedicate a separate space for them to dry. Be aware that some students will finish relatively quickly, while others will want more time. I have early finishers assist peers in finding images they are looking for. (I also frequently make announcements to the class when a student is looking for a particular image so that everyone can help look for it.) For those who need more time, I provide the materials during a study hall or student free time.

Displaying student collages is a nice way to decorate the classroom and make students feel more at home in the space. The collages spark conversations between students about the images and words they chose, encouraging them to learn more about one another. There are many possible ways to display the collages, and after trying several different methods, I settled on hanging them from a wire placed high on the classroom wall and keeping them on display for the entire school year. I was lucky to have help with this from my husband Parthiv and art teacher Andrew, who both graciously assisted with installing the wires along with hooks to support the wires. Once this was done, I hung the collages using clothespins.

It was fun putting my students' collages on display, knowing that they would enjoy seeing their work when they entered the room. Thanks to the simple artwork my students created, my classroom always had a bit of decoration with a personal touch. 

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Summertime Science in the Garden: Pollination

Bumblebee visiting gayfeather flowers in my dad's garden in Maine

Summer is a great season to spend time in a garden, and you often receive a little science lesson in the process. I enjoy watching various pollinators at work as they visit flowers. One of my favorites is the bumblebee, which is able to access pollen unavailable to other pollinators. Its secret is buzzing at a specific frequency that causes the flower's anthers to open and release pollen. (To learn more about buzz pollination, see the link at the end of this post to a Science Friday video on this topic.)

I learned about the importance of pollinators the hard way one year when my zucchini plants produced lots of flowers but no zucchini! I discovered that zucchini and other squash flowers are monoecious, meaning they have separate male and female flowers on the same plant. They can't self-pollinate, like some perfect flowers do, but instead rely on pollinators for the flowers to develop into fruits, the zucchini. Pollinators carry pollen from the anthers of a male flower to the stigma of a female flower. You can see these flower parts in the photos below, taken in my plot in the Juniper-Front Community Garden in San Diego.

Male squash flower with pollen-covered anther in the center

Female flower with stigma in the center

Fellow gardeners suggested that I plant some flowers to attract pollinators, and this has been very helpful. I learned that humans can serve as pollinators, too! This is a fun activity to do with kids. To hand pollinate a zucchini or other squash flower, remove the petals from a male squash blossom, and rub its anthers on the stigma of a female flower. One male flower can be used to pollinate multiple female flowers. 

Female blossom- note ovary below petals

Three days later: ovary developing into fruit

Male flower- note absence of ovary below petals

Once the flower has been pollinated, the pollen forms a tube that travels from the stigma down through the style to fertilize the ovules at the base of the pistil, triggering the development of the zucchini fruit. I now use this trick to pollinate my zucchini and spaghetti squash flowers with great success! 

If you enjoy watching pollinators and think you might be interested in helping collect data on pollinators in your area, you can learn about a citizen science project called The Great Sunflower Project in this blog post:

Get Outdoors with Citizen Science! The Great Sunflower Project

To learn more about buzz pollination, check out this Science Friday video:

Science Friday Video on Buzz Pollination

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Trashion Show: Weaving Art into Lessons on Human Impact and Sustainability

The most fun project that I do with my students is by far our annual Trashion Show, a project that compliments the NGSS standards related to human impact. As students learn about sustainability, they are challenged to repurpose landfill-bound textiles and other materials to create new outfits and costumes. We do this project at the end of the school year, and I’ve found that it’s a great way to keep students engaged and motivated even with summer vacation on the horizon. Students work with a purpose: to use their creativity to put on a great show! Guiding students in creating the Trashion Show keeps me motivated, too! As their teacher, I love seeing students' individuality on display in the outfits they create and the other work they do. 

Well before we begin working on the Trashion Show, I start soliciting donations of used textiles. Over spring break, I send out an email asking families to save items for us while doing their spring cleaning. This year my dad was the face of my donation campaign. I used a photo of him holding a very well-loved and worn t-shirt that he was donating to us with the subject line, “Do You Dress Like My Dad?” 

Once students begin working, they may have specific used materials that they are seeking, so I send additional emails with a list of their desired trash. My general rule for creating Trashion Show pieces is that we shouldn’t create more trash than we started with, so students need to design outfits that can be taken apart into recyclable pieces at the end of the show. (The exception is for used materials that can't be recycled.)

Not all students want to be designers and create outfits, but there are other important jobs that need to be done. A DJ is needed to work with designers and models to select songs to play. The marketing director works on advertising by drafting emails to send to teachers and families and fliers to post in the school. There are typically two MCs who introduce and close the Trashion Show and read descriptions of the outfits as they are being modeled. Speech writers work with MCs on the script and assist designers with descriptions when needed. 

The teacher acts as a project manager, keeping the work flow in motion by guiding students who finish their tasks to find work that needs to be done in another area. As students are in the midst of creating their outfits and costumes, I provide them with opportunities to showcase their works-in-progress and plans for the outfit. The goal of sharing their work helps students stay focused, and I can easily see the development of all of the pieces. 

Model and Designer of "Childhood Dreams"

My dad's old shirt made new again!

The Trashion Show is a project I lead with the 6th-grade class, but other members of the school community are drawn in as models and later as our audience. Involving kindergarteners and other younger children as models is always a crowd pleaser, and I often have my daughter model an outfit that I have made. The model who always got the most applause though was our former principal, Phil Beaumont, who is a natural (and professional) performer! 

Holding a Trashion Show is a nice way to bring the entire school community together and have some fun while weaving art into science lessons.

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UCSD Engineering Project for San Diego Students Grades 4 and 6

 

If you teach fourth or sixth grade in San Diego, you might be interested in having your students participate in the University of California San Diego's Seismic Outreach program. This hands-on project follows the engineering design process used in the Next Generation Science Standards as students gain experience creating earthquake-resistant structures. Another great part of the program is the exposure your students get to engineering students at UCSD and campus life. 

The project begins with a visit from UCSD engineering students, who give a presentation on earthquake-resistant building design. Students then work on teams to create specified building structures made out of K'NEX pieces and test them either by shaking them manually or placing them on a homemade shake table (seen in photo above). UCSD provided me with directions for how to build one using materials you can get at a hardware store.

When building and testing specified structures, each team is given a variable to test, such as where to place bracing or whether to make the first story taller or shorter. Teams present their findings to the class, take notes on their peers' presentations, and then use this information in the design of their final building. Following the engineering design process, students build their models, test them on the shake table, and refine their design.

Students work on their test structures and buildings for a few weeks, so it helps to designate a space in the classroom for storage. 

The most exciting- or maybe nerve-racking- part of the program when students present their buildings to be tested on an electric mini shake table. This is done with a field trip to the UCSD campus or sometimes a second visit by UCSD students. My students look forward to the event but are also nervous about how their buildings will perform! Many buildings do break on the shake table, so I prepare my students by letting them know that it's the job of the UCSD students to try to break their buildings, and they are experts at doing this. Having buildings break is just part of the process, and when UCSD students have their own structures tested, they routinely break, too!

The Seismic Outreach program touches on NGSS standards beyond engineering. Students are introduced to waves by learning about the seismic waves that cause earthquakes. Earthquakes teach students about tectonic plate movement. Before starting the Seismic Outreach project, I lead students in doing activities related to the movement of tectonic plates and the location of fossil finds, hitting other NGSS standards.

If you are interested in learning more about the Seismic Outreach program at UCSD, follow this link:

https://scse.ucsd.edu/seismic-outreach.html

If you would like to explore another engineering project for middle school students, see my blog post about Future City Competition:

Students Explore Engineering and Sustainability through the Future City Competition

For a low-prep team building activity, follow this link to a blogpost on Venn diagrams:

Classroom Icebreaker / Getting to Know You Activity: Venn Diagrams

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Students Explore Engineering and Sustainability through the Future City Competition

The Future City Competition is an engaging, project-based activity that opens the door to middle school students in learning about engineering and sustainability. Students work on teams to design sustainable cities of the future, envisioning a world that they would like to live in. The project encourages creativity and problem solving. I have used it with my middle school students to teach the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) related to engineering practices and human impact.

The Future City Competition is open to students in grades six through eight. The season starts in the fall though the theme is announced in late spring. It's exciting to learn about the new theme and start to brainstorm ways of engaging students with it. 

I use the Future City Competition as part of the regular curriculum in seventh-grade science classes. Students start working on the project at the beginning of the school year. I put them in groups of three (four when needed). Groups begin with a team-building exercise such as a three-circle Venn diagram about themselves so that they get to know one another better (see link below). I review the new Future City Competition theme and introduce the deliverables that the teams will be working on. Students continue their work through early winter as they progress through the stages of the engineering design process.

The three main deliverables are an essay describing the design of the city, a physical scale model, and a presentation that uses the model. The model is always a student favorite. It is made primarily of recycled materials and requires creating one or more moving parts. The variety of the deliverables both highlight and develop diverse student strengths, including the ability to understand scientific and engineering concepts, competency in research and writing, the ability to create things with your hands, and presentation skills. Throughout the project, students develop teamwork, problem-solving, and project management skills. I tell students that each team member will bring different talents and strengths that will be helpful to their team at the various stages of the project. (I have recently simplified the city essay by requiring only an outline of the city design for teams not going to competition).

The Future City Competition has regional competitions, often for each state, and winners go on to the national competition. A regional competition may limit the number of teams sent by each school, so many schools have a school-level competition to select teams for the regional competition. Winning at the regional level and going on to the national competition is highly competitive, but there are more accessible prizes in multiple categories that teams may win. Teams from the Museum School have taken home several of these prizes.

Registration for Future City Competition opens in late spring and continues through the fall. Below is a link to get more information and to register.

Future City Competition

Here is a video of a team presenting their city design at the national Future City Competition:

Future City National Finals: Michigan

If you are looking for a team-building activity, follow this link to a blogpost on Venn diagrams:

Classroom Icebreaker / Getting to Know You Activity: Venn Diagrams

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Personalize Physics Problems with Student Names!

 

Surprise your students by handing them physics problems in which they are the stars! Making your students characters in their physics problems captures their attention and engages them in reading the problems as they search for their names and the names of their friends.

For years, I have been using physics practice problems with student names woven into the "stories" to provide a little entertainment while teaching Newton's laws of motion. After giving lessons on the basics of Newton's First, Second, and Third Laws, I give them problem sets in which every student makes a cameo appearance. Here is an example of one of the problems:

Liam and Yosi are installing a monument to the 8th-grade class in front of the Museum School. The monument needs to be moved to the left, so they put it on a frictionless surface and pull it along with a rope. Together they pull with a force of 500 N. The monument’s mass is 100 kg. What is the monument’s acceleration?

I am able to use the same basic problems each year but tweak them a bit by changing the students' names along with some details in the problems. For example, I might change a sport from baseball to softball. I try to create funny problems or those that incorporate students' interests. I enjoy making characters in the problems that match the different personalities in my class, and I have fun placing students in the various roles each year.

I have found that using these personalized physics problems is especially useful at times when students are feeling less engaged, such as when we near the end of the school year. My eighth-grade students are excited about graduating and moving on to their next big step of entering high school. This year the "senioritis", or "eighth graditis", has been particularly pronounced. I have actually heard students counting down the days until graduation! This is all very normal and to be expected, but as a teacher, I have to have something in my back pocket to keep them interested. I honestly didn't know how well the personalized physics problems would go over with my current eighth-grade crowd, but they actually really liked them! 

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Polymer Lab: Gel Worms

 

The "gel worm" lab on synthetic polymers is a class favorite! Students are surprised and entertained when they put their fingers into the two liquids they combined to pull out the stretchy polymer that has formed. 

This lab is appropriate for middle school students, and I have used it with students in grades seven and eight.

The American Chemical Society has created free, engaging labs that align with the Next Generation Science Standards. This polymer lab addresses the standard MS-PS1-3: Gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society. The lab comes with a comprehensive lesson plan that compares natural products with synthetic ones, and it is a great starting point for a larger discussion on the role of synthetic plastics in our world.    

The reactants used to produce the "gel worm" polymer are sodium alginate and calcium chloride. Sodium alginate can be found online, and the most cost efficient way to purchase calcium chloride is buying unscented DampRid, which consists of pure calcium chloride and is available in hardware stores.  I find it easiest to make the solutions at least a day in advance. The first time I tried making the sodium alginate solution, I spent a long time slowly adding the solute and shaking the solution, but I couldn't get all of the sodium alginate to dissolve. I later discovered that simply letting the solution set overnight resulted in a nice solution without clumps.

If you would like to try this fun lab with your students or your own children, follow this link:

American Chemical Society Lab: Natural Resources & Synthetic Materials

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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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