This week, although busy, proved to be a great time for reflection. As we baked our last two cakes that the Mountain Lions will bake together in our class, we thought about what we had learned, other things we have baked, and much quicker we are at baking these cakes now! One student noted that when we started baking, Erin and Caitie did a lot of clean up because it would be time to go outside while we were finishing the baking. Now, she said, “we finish the baking and still have time to make other choices!” We could not be more proud of everything these students have accomplished, and with the incredible amount of enthusiasm and ideas they brought every day to school.

“The Delicious School Bus: Inside Baking” went through its final revisions and printing this week as well. It was quite the process, to have twenty six eager students with notes on what to change and improve every day after reading the newest copy. However, this creative and collaborative process is certainly what transformed the book into what is today, and how it got sent home to each family. The Mountain Lions all had funny and interesting ideas of how the book should be written and what absolutely, positively needed to be incorporated. It certainly is a The Magic School Bus inspired cook book if there ever was one.

Project Night highlights included many delicious treats brought in by parents (some were even baked in celebration of our project!), and a review of project based learning and how our project succeeded in meeting standards, and how our students gained a multitude of both academic and lifelong skills in this project. This project helped students learn and grow in the four pillars of development, all the while challenging them to do some great critical thinking and problem solving on a daily basis in the classroom and on field trips. Students also had the opportunity to read the cook book, which they worked so hard on, with their families. Lastly, students got the chance to sign their very own copy of each cook book. An author signing is always very exciting! Both of the Project Night presentations were highly attended. We thank you, families and friends, for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and see what we’ve learned from our project! It was a great celebration of five months of baking, hard work, and a lot of butter and fun!

We'll now take the next week or so and get a feeling for what our shift in interest will be. There have been inklings of a few recurring questions and themes, so stay tuned during this time of welcomed and exciting transition!

After the voting, ingredients list, and grocery shopping that took place last week, we hit the ground running on Monday to get started baking our final cake for Project Night. On both Monday and Tuesday, we baked the cakes that would undoubetly be center stage at Project Night. Wednesday and Thursday we made frosting and then frosted and chocolate chipped the cakes! Every student had a hand in baking these last cakes. Some students felt as thought the baking project shouldn't be over yet, and that there were still so many more things we could bake and learn about. During these last cakes, Erin and Caitie were sure to mention that this was for Project Night, and they would be the last things we bake together in class for a while. Project Night was a great conclusion and finale to the project, so that parents, teachers, students, and friends alike can see the culmination of all of this hard and tasty work.

Who do you want to dedicate your cookbook to?

Dylan: “My Mom. She’s really nice.”

Jessie: “Woods. Because I care about him.”

Ava: “Brooks H. Because he likes baking.”

Gray: “Kiki, she is my favorite.”

Willa: “Laila, she is the best friend.”

Smith: “To my brother, Owen. You are nice and I like playing with you. And you like The Magic School Bus.”

Brooks H: “Ava. She is such a nice friend.”

Woods: “Laila. She is pretty and I like her.”

Owen: “Riley. Because he’s my friend, and he likes baking. So now he can make bread or cake or cookies with me or his Mom.”

 Carly: “Jacob. He is nice and he makes things for the whole family, even me.”

Laila: “I want to give my book to Willa because I love her.”

Connor: “Brooks. I like him, and he likes food, especially BBQ.”

Marleigh: “My Mommy. I want her to read it and I love her and she works so hard.”

Leo: “Bennett, he’s a good friend and he’s funny.”

Murphy: “Marleigh. I like her!”

Brooks L: “My Mom, because I love her.”

Rowan: “My Mom and Dad because I love them. And they are my favorite persons.”

Lily: “To Hailey! I love you!”

Bennett: “To Mom and Dad because I love you.”

Abigail: “To Mommy. I love you!”

Henry: “To my Dad and my Mom because I love you!”

We’re off and running on what seems to be our next project! All this week we experimented and asked lots of questions about water in its various forms.

We have been making a lot of great observations and asking wonderful questions during our experiments with water this week. We had the opportunity to work with Tootsie, from the TSS Graduate Program, and Chrissy, a TSS Americorps Intern, who helped us with our experiments.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Tootsie and Chrissy each did a neat experiment with water. Tootsie’s experiment was comprised of green colored corn syrup, red dyed water, and vegetable oil (which stayed its normal yellowish color). Each student took turns adding each of these liquidy substances into a glass jar and watched them interact. The corn syrup sunk to the bottom, even when there was water and oil in the way! Oil always stayed on the top! We added beads, and the beads were either on the level with water, or on the level with oil. We added glitter, and at first glitter stayed on top of the oil, on the very top! But once we mixed it, the glitter sank to the bottom of the jar. Why did that happen?

“I think it will change to a different color. It’s making a sandwich. It makes me wonder about a rainbow.” (Carly)

“I think the glitter will stay higher than the beads because it is lighter.” (Owen)

“It sinks! The girls were right!” (Laila)

“I think the green was too heavy so it sunk to the bottom.” (Smith)

“It turned into rasta colors!” –Carly

“The green will sink because it is so thick.” –Rowan

“Tiny things float. The green is thick and holding the red up. The red is still thick, but less thick than the green, so it is holding the yellow up. All of those things will work together to hold up the beads.” –Marleigh

Team hypothesis: “The glitter will float like the beads because they are all small.” –Marleigh, Rowan, Connor

“We know the green is heaviest because it sinks down to the bottom. The yellow is the lightest because it stays on top, even when you flip it over.” –Rowan

“The green will sink because it’s gooier than the water.” –Lily, Marleigh

“I think the green will float because there is already something else on the bottom… Well, now the green is sinking because it is harder than the other colors.” –Dylan

Team conclusion: “The green weighs the most. And the yellow is the lightest.” –Lily, Dylan, Marleigh

Chrissy’s experiment was all about mixing water with corn starch, flour, salt, and oats, which made for a smooth initial transition from our baking project to asking some experimental "why" and "how" questions. Some of those things disappeared in the water! Where did they go? Why did the corn starch make the water really thick? Why do the oats start at the top and then sink to the bottom?

Dissolving Baking Ingredients 

Baking Products used: cornstarch, salt, oats, flour, powdered sugar, baking soda

“Look at the bubble!” (Murphy)

“Why is the bubble there?” (Jessie)

“Because the air is under it!” (Murphy)

“The baking soda melted!” (Brooks H.)

“You don’t want to drink this because it is way salty! It sinks and it is gone!” (Jessie)

“I wonder why do some things dissolve and some things don’t?  The oatmeal sinks. It’s turning crumbly, there is too much water.” (Elli)

“The cornstarch is turning to corn again. It’s white, it turned to milk.” (Jessie)

“It is BAD milk.” (Emmett)

“I don’t think it will taste like milk.” (Elli)

“I think the sprinkles will dissolve because they are smaller than the oatmeal.” –Leo

“I think the salt will dissolve because it is tiny.” –Bennett

“Mine is turning into chocolate milk.” –Rowan

“I think the oats with dissolve because when they get wet, they break apart. They are very fragile.” –Murphy

“The things that are so small dissolve.” –Murphy

Sink and Float in the Sensory Table:

In the sensory table, we were experimenting with what floats and what sinks. We tested the floating and sinking functions of many, many objects the past four days: rocks, sponges, balls, plates, cups, lids, leaves, pine cones, beans, beads, various utensils, glitter, sand, plastic animals and insects! Do all small things float? Do all large things sink? Does it have to be made of something in particular to float? Do all plastic things float? Do all metal things sink? How is it possible that the lid to our baking pot in our classroom kitchen sinks and floats? This is crazy!

“If its not plastic, it sinks. It floats because it is plastic. It sinks because it’s too heavy. Shape affects it. If you push it down, it comes back up.  Plastic things float, metal things sink” (Murphy). 

Observation: Abigail shows Murphy that a metal lid floats and sinks, Murphy looks intrigued.

“It sinks because I like sinking things.” (Connor)

“It floats because it is light, just like me. I’m light.” (Willa)

“This pan can float or sink down. One is lighter than the other.” (Abigail)

“I’m on a boat!” (Henry)

“It’s metal, so it sinks, it is heavy. It floats, it is plastic.” (Rowan)

Other things we're wondering...

We’ve updated our wonder wall to reflect our new project and the numerous questions that are coming along with it. Here is a little taste of what we’ve been wondering, but next time you’re in the classroom, take a look at the wonder wall, we’re wondering new things every day!

“I’m wondering about where water goes once it goes down the drain in the sink. I know it goes to the sewer system, but where does it go after that?” (Rowan)

“I’m wondering about how snow gets made from the clouds.” (Murphy)

“Where is the ice when it’s summer? I know the sun makes it melt, but how does it come back?” (Henry)

“How does snow melt and look different even when it’s still cold out?” (Leo)

“How does lightning get into the sky?” (Owen)

“Sometimes, in the same spot in the river, I can touch the bottom. And sometimes I can’t. Why does that happen?” (Elli)

“How are rainbows made in the sky? How do they choose their colors?” (Laila)

On Thursday we borrowed some "dripping devices" from Chris and Bonnie's room. After the experiments we took part in on Tuesday, we were wondering if any of those liquids or oils were in these tubes. The slow drips seemed similar to how the corn syrup acted in our experiments. The blue and pink drip looked like our oil, but how did they get it different colors? When we tried to dye our oil, it just stayed yellow. How do they get the little spikes in there for the fast drip, that looks like water, to go around? Can we make some of these? What materials would we use? How would we make it?

Developing a new area of the classroom is a hard task, but it is also fun and exciting. Challenging the students to come up with ideas and then building and creating those ideas in the studio allows us all to see a visual of what is in each student's mind. They collaborate with each other, and with teachers, to express what they would like to see in the classroom, ultimately giving them a great deal of ownership over what we are learning, and what the final product may be. As you’ve seen in the past week, there is so much we could learn about water: weather patterns, temperature as it pertains to freezing and melting, salt and fresh water, what water means to people and other organisms, where water comes from in it many forms, etc. This entry event of designing our dramatic play area will be a great guide for where our project is headed and what the students are most enthusiastic about studying.  Our animated front runners thus far are creating a snow fort or castle, or turning our classroom into an underwater world. As we obtain more ideas, our process for this event will take this shape over the next few weeks:

-Gather ideas

-Ask students to create a model (build with blocks or studio materials, paint, color, etc.)

-Show models to classmates (may be done in form of partner pairs with a pitch and chance for public speaking)

-Vote!

-Create a list of supplies we will need to make our ideas come to life.

-Build!

This week, we asked, “What should we make to pretend water, snow, and ice in? What can we build? What do we want to make so we can play with and experience water and/or snow in the classroom?

“Something with ice, water, and snow.” –Dylan

“We could make a snowfort. But if we make it out of ice, it will melt.” –Laila

“We could make divers.” –Murphy

“We should make a pretend snowfort. Not with real snow because that would not be a very good choice.” –Woods

“We should pretend to be fishes!” –Elli

“We should make fish costumes. We would be under water. The kids can be baby fishes and eggs. We would live in the salt water. There is salt in the Salt Lake City.” –Owen

“We should make an ocean. We get fake water and fake ice and little creatures and pretend to be the people who are scuba diving. It would look like blue, there would be rocks, under water mountains, little starfishes, crabs, lobsters, fishes, and octopus.” –Carly

“An ice sculpture. Real ice will melt. A snow sculpture will melt, too. We could make it out of something white.” –Marleigh

“We could build a castle with blocks. Or we could build a snowflake.” –Abigail

“I want to pretend to be a fish. Fish live in water. They live in a creek, a pond, river. They do not live in a bathtub. An ocean. We need costumes.” –Willa

“Waves from a boat. But fishes get killed from the propellers.” –Owen

“No boats! The ocean is colorful. We need a rainbow fish.” –Abigail

“Get the stage and paint blue all over it for water. Cut some fish out of cardboard and paint them every single color. We would make seaweed out of green paper. We would pretend it was a river or a pond.” –Murphy

“The curtains should be blue with waves. The boat… we should go under it like a fish and over it like people.” –Owen

“A snow fort or an ice fort. A fort built with bottles full of snow and ice. We could build it with the hard, hard, mush.  We could put it in tall bottles.” –Dylan

“We should put a bunch of layers of water and then put all the windows open and it will be like Mr. Popper’s Penguins.” –Owen

“We should build a river. There must be fish. A big river. It should go all the way from the bathroom to the door. We need sand, water, a sign that says “river,” and a picture of a river.” –Laila

“A boat! We need a red boat. You use your body to move it.” –Gray

“The floor and walls would be blue. Inside would be costumes of sea animals, 2 of each: 2 sharks, 2 angel fish, 3 octopus, 3 jellyfish, 2 dolphins, 3 crabs, 2 turtles, 3 starfish, 3 walruses, 2 snow bears, 3 penguins. We need lots of blue, all different kinds of paper we can paint. We can use the splashy mush stuff.” –Dylan

“We used to live at Hawaii. The ocean was blue and warm with real dolphins. I think we could paint blue water and put it on the floor. Yellow for the sand. The trees are special in Hawaii.  They have sticky-out parts but they are different than here.” –Elli

"An ice sculpture, because they are so cool. But it would melt in the classroom." -Leo

"I want a canoe in our classroom. We could maybe make it out of the blocks because they are both wood. We could draw some raindrops and cut them out and hang them from the ceiling. A canoe in a storm is what we could call it." -Bennett

"A river!  There should be seashells and some fish. Definitely rainbow fish. It should start over by the desk and end at the sink in the kitchen. We need a dock, we can build it off your desk, that's where all of the fish will live." -Brooks L.

What we know about water, in its many forms…

“Sea anemones live in South America. They live in water. Salt water. We don’t have salt water here. But there’s salt water in Salt Lake City.” –Emmett

“The hermit crabs live in salt water. Water is strong. The water can push the prickles down on the rocks to make the rocks smooth. We should put rocks in the sensory table. Rough ones. Then we can make a wave that comes and makes the rocks smooth.” –Murphy

“Snow and ice have water in them. We should make snow sculptures outside in the play yard. We can stomp down the snow and then carve the snow out.” –Dylan

“Bubbles are made of water. Bubbles are wet.” –Jessie

“Some things only live in the water some times.” –Dylan

“All turtles live in the sea. The sea has salt. The lake is fresh water.” –Brooks H.

“Caitie, this book shows penguins eating fruit, but I don’t think penguins eat fruit! They eat lots of tiny things.” –Murphy

“Fish! They eat fish!” –Jessie

“Penguins live in the ocean. On icebergs.” –Gray

“They live in dirty water, like there is poisonous stuff there. I think they live in salt water an fresh water.” –Murphy

“Ice melts into water and I think water freezes to ice.” –Elli

“I want to be an animal helper, but I don’t want to live in the jungle. Animals live in water to stay warm, like walruses, sometimes. Walruses live in water and land, but mostly water because they don’t have any feet. Some animals don’t breathe in air, they breathe in water.” –Smith

“Hermit crabs look like lobsters. They both have pinchers.” –Henry

“The animals in the hermit crab book are all living in salt water.” –Leo

“All of those animals live at the beach, which means they live in salt water.” –Marleigh

“But I’m wondering more about caribou. I think they live in the snow at the North Pole. What do they do in all of that snow in the winter time?” –Marleigh

“Sometimes salt water hurts. Why? Fresh water doesn’t hurt.” –Brooks L.

We played with water in many different forms this week! We also used art, and our sensory table to see how water interacts with a variety of mediums. At the easel we had tempura paints for the first half of the week. This is a seemingly hard medium that looks at first like a small, colorful block of concrete. However, when we add enough water and drag our paintbrush through the block, it turns into a thick watercolor-like medium.

We also had actual watercolors in the studio this week. These were made by the teachers, but we could see that the colors already exist; we didn’t have to mix water in with anything to make our paint. It was drippier, and not as thick as the tempura paints. We also used white crayons to draw on our paper before using the water colors. The crayons repelled the water, and those areas that had crayons on them beforehand stayed white! That was wild! With these watercolors, we could also see how colors change when they are mixed up… sometimes if you mix colors they make pretty purples and greens, but if you mix too many colors we end up with a dark brown, ick!

Lastly, we had water and ice in the sensory table and had the opportunity to see how water passes through funnels and hoses, and how water and ice are affected by temperature. As the ice warmed, it melted, but it also made the water colder. We noticed that most plastic things dry quickly, while other things that look like they are made of cloth (sponges, towels) take longer to dry.

We ended this week with an experiment with ice, sugar, and salt. Does salt or sugar melt ice faster? Why? We were surprised by what we found, and now we’re wondering why! More on this experiment and these questions next week!

As the Mountain Lions begin to ask more questions, we’re doing more research on a variety of water-related topics. This week these questions ranged from animals under the sea to wondering about ice cubes. On Monday, there was an ocean scene in the sensory table, which was very exciting! There was a lot of talk about sharks, dolphins, and many questions about coral and sea anemones after reading Eric Carle’s A House For Hermit Crab. Are coral and sea anemones animals? How is that possible? They don’t appear to have eyes, ears, noses, or mouths? Are they plants? But don’t plants need sun to live? These are just a few of the questions we’ve been wondering about the ocean.

On Wednesday and Thursday there was snow and glitter in the sensory table! In addition to being the “definitely the most pretty thing we have ever had in the sensory table” (Willa), we had fun making slushies and snow castles in the table with the snow and ice we had. We wondered about layering the glitter, and how we would make slushies. Below are some slushy conversation highlights Rowan and Brooks L. had on Wednesday:

 “We are making the snow turn to slush. I think the glitter is trying to make the snow melt. It’s a slushy. It’s like a huckleberry shake. ” –Rowan

“A slushy is cold. Really cold!” –Brooks L.

“5 bananas. 6 dough pieces. Huckleberries and chocolate powder. That is the recipe for a slushy.” –Rowan

On Thursday, and continuing into next week, we will be working on designing and making our very own ice cubes! On Thursday the ice cubes were coated with glitter, confetti, beads, string, food coloring, bottle caps, and leaves. Some of the ice cubes got put into a freezer and some were left outside overnight. Some of the ice cubes had slush in them, and some were still completely liquid. We know it was cold enough to snow, so why did the muffin tins that were left outside not freeze? Hopefully they will freeze over the weekend! Caitie took a peek at the muffin tins in the freezer, and those ice cubes look really neat! 

We’ve been studying snowflakes in their various forms the past two weeks. We’ve noticed that the snowflakes are the prettiest when they are just falling from the sky, and that they clump together once they have been on the ground for a little while. We’re making lots of observations, and coming up with some great questions about why this is the case. Chrissy has been bringing a bunch of hand lenses and glasses that are used especially to look at snowflakes. It is neat getting to see them so closely, and in such great detail!

“When water crystals mix with dirt in the clouds, it freezes and makes snow.” –Murphy

“Snow is frozen ice crystals.” –Smith

“Snow comes from clouds.” –Emmett

“Snow is ice.” –Jessie

“First it’s snow and then it’s hail. But only when it is a little warm.” –Willa

We also did another experiment with ice this week: what melts ice faster, sugar or salt? How does it work?

What melts ice faster, sugar or salt?

"The sun!” –Dylan

“I would choose salt.” –Emmett

“Heat, air, but for this I would choose sugar.” –Smith

“Sugar will melt it faster because it’s heavier.” –Brooks L.

What is ice?

“Ice is frozen salt water.” –Emmett

“Frozen water, water comes from ice and snow.” –Dylan

“Ice is frozen water.” –Smith

“The water in the cup comes from the ice melting.” –Marleigh

“Ice is frozen water.” –Woods