• 24 Hour Science Projects

• 101 Easy Science Projects

• Science Fair Projects Made Easy

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PROBLEM:

How does the type of light affect water’s evaporation rate?

HYPOTHESIS:

I think that  (place your own hypothesis here).

MATERIALS USED:

(Your materials might be a little different.  Use what you have.)

• Eleven 9 ounce Solo cups
• Water
• Weight Scale
• One Sharpie marker

EXPERIMENT:

1. Fill five cups with an equal amount of water, labeling the cups A-E.
2. Place cups in different places around the house.
3. Wait four days and then mark the water level.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 using five different cups labeled A2-E2.  Put cups in the exact same places as the first five cups.   Place A2 cup where A had been, etc.
5. After four more days, weigh each of the ten cups with the water in them, including a control cup with the original amount of water.
6. Average the two trials for each cup (A & A2, etc.) and calculate the percentages to see how much water evaporated.

RESULTS:

(Fill in the blanks with the percentages you got from your calculations.)

1. Cup A:  ____% evaporated
2. Cup B:  ____% evaporated
3. Cup C:  ____% evaporated
4. Cup D:  ____% evaporated
5. Cup E:  ____% evaporated

CONCLUSION:

My hypothesis was supported by my experiment:  (Place your own conclusion here.)

PROJECT BOARD:

Type out the Problem, Hypothesis, and Experiment, etc., and display on left side of board.  In the middle section, have the title of the project and photos or sketches of the cups of water and where they were placed.  Also, graphs can be made on the computer displaying the results of the experiment.  On the right side of the board, display the Results and your Conclusion.

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This is a great “big book” (or “board book” as some may call them) that is made by Funfax.  It’s great for teaching different levels:

• Young children – just talk about the basics
• ESL students – pictures and visuals are great for teaching them
• Gifted students – deeper material in the book can be used with them and higher level questions can be presented
• Science lesson – pick and choose the material in the book you need for your lesson

I’ve had my book for a while, but they are still available through Amazon.

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• Make sure students understand “same” and “different.” Have two objects that are exactly the same and one that is different (such as two math books and an English book, or two identical balls and one that is different, etc.)  Show the two objects that are the same and talk about how they are alike.  Then show two objects that are different and talk about the ways they are different.
• Show two flowers that are not completely alike and talk about the ways they are the same (both are pretty, both smell good, both have stems, both have leaves, etc.) and ways they are different (one is shorter, they are different colors, etc.)  Talk about how we use our senses of look, smell, and touch when we’re comparing the flowers.
• Explain to students there are different ways to compare things. Have a group of objects such as shells that the students can practice comparing and putting into groups such as big shells/little shells and then white shells/colored shells.  Other objects that you could use to compare and group would be different sizes and colors of seeds, various rocks, or different sizes and colors of marbles.
• Have students compare their pencils.  Remind students there are different ways to compare things.  Have students with pencils longer than six inches line up on one side of the room.  Have students with pencils shorter than six inches line up on the other side.  Another comparison would be to have yellow pencils on one side and colored pencils on the other side.  Or pencils with erasers on one side and those without erasers on the other.

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Here are some tips from my friend:

• Animation is important.  At the middle school level, students generally don’t like animation, but these ESL students looked for clues in all areas. Moving arms in directions, changing voice tones for emphasis, etc.
• Teacher uses balls with flashlights, etc., to show the concepts of the basics of atoms, astronomy, chemistry, etc.
• Use lots of simple visuals and drawings.

This teacher told of this example:

I had a very low English level girl from Mexico paired up with a brand new Vietnamese student with even lower English proficiency. They had to do a lab with measuring, graphing, etc. They were one of the best groups!! They communicated with pointing, moving objects, nods and smiles, and did better together than either could have apart.  And they did this totally by signals. It takes cooperation, though, and middle schoolers get embarrassed so easy.  They don’t want to appear ‘dumb’ so they act like they don’t want to do things.

This is my opinion:

Labeling was done in the first year of learning English, and I think it would still be good for students with less English profiency in the second and third years.   If they already know what the object is and how to read the word, having the label could also reinforce learning how to spell the word.

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Most kids are fascinated with volcanoes.  When teaching about them, it is important to let kids make a volcano, have good pictures of real volcanoes, and if possible, a video, since most students are not able to take a field trip to actually see a volcano.  If you are fortunate to be in Hawaii, then you can actually hike up to the top of Diamond Head, an extinct volcano.  We did this, and it was quite impressive.  Or you can visit Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which we also did, and you might get to see an actual lava flow.  We didn’t get close enough to actually see a lava flow, but we did walk through the Thurston Lava Tube which was long and very interesting.

Here is a book we own that has many interesting pictures about volcanoes:

• Hawaii Volcanoes:  The Story Behind the Scenery by Glen Kaye

MAKE YOUR OWN VOLCANO:

1. Use a large pan,  9 x 13.   Place an empty 16 ounce bottle in the middle of it with the top off.
2. Using either papier mache, modeling clay, or salt play dough, make a mountain with vertical ridges around the bottle.  Do not cover the top of the bottle.  Paint brown and let dry.
3. Mix 1 tablespoon liquid dishwashing soap and 1 tablespoon baking soda in a cup and carefully pour into the bottle in the middle of the mountain.  (If you’re brave, you can add a few drops of red or orange food coloring in with the soap and baking soda.)
4. Place the pan with the mountain outside.  Add 1/4 cup white vinegar to the bottle and stand back.  Your volcano will erupt!

• For ESL students, be sure and label everything.
• For Gifted students, ask higher level questions.  If you want the chemical reaction, this is it:  NaHCO3 + CH3COOH –> Na+ + H2O + CO2 + CH3COO-.  When the baking soda and vinegar are mixed, it produces a carbon dioxide gas (a chemical reaction) which is the same gas that a real volcano produces.
  

VOLCANO KITS:

• Kit:  Volcano Island – Discovery Extreme Light and Sound Rumbling Volcano  by  Poof Slinky
• Our Amazing Volcanoes / Earth Science Kit by Poof Slinky
• Volcano Kit by Schylling

CHILDREN’S VIDEOS:

• Earth Science for Children:  All About Volcanoes
• Magic School Bus Volcano Adventure

CHILDREN’S BOOKS:

• Volcanoes (The Wonders of Our World) by Anne Schreiber.  Good for all ages.  Excellent Teaching Tool!
• Dk Readers:  Eruption–The Story of Volcanoes (Level 2) by Anita Ganeri
• National Geographic Readers Volcanoes! by Anne Schreiber
• The Best Book of Volcanoes by Simon Adams
• The Magic School Bus Blows Its Top:  A Book About Volcanoes by Gail Herman and Bob Ostrom.  Good for PreK-1.  Not your typical Magic School Bus book.
• Time for Kids:  Volcanoes! by Editors Of Time For Kids
• Volcanoes by Jacques Durieux and Philippe Bourseiller. Spectacular photos!
• Volcanoes (All Aboard Science Reader) by Nicholas Nirgiotis.  Go0d for K-2.  Pictures look like clay.
  
• Volcanoes (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) by Franklyn Mansfield Branley and Megan Lloyd.  Good for PreK-2 and older.
• Volcanoes!  Mountains of Fire (Step-Into-Reading, Step 4) by Eric Arnold.  Good for 4th grade.

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The 5 Senses – Use a lot of various things for each sense.  Label by putting names of things on index cards:

• SEEING – have different objects or pictures to look at such as things of different colors and shapes, etc.   An activity would be to group things together that are the same color or the same shape.
• FEELING – have objects of different textures to touch such as rough and smooth, hard & soft objects (rock, stick, cotton ball, feather), etc.  An activity would be to group all the rough rocks together and all the smooth stones together.
• HEARING – have different things that make sound such as musical instruments, small drum, container with popcorn in it so it makes noise when shaken, etc.
• SMELLING – have various things to smell such as a cotton ball with perfume, small containers with different spices, cotton ball with vinegar, etc.
• TASTING – have different things to taste (something sweet, something salty, something sour)

Concepts to cover:  We find out many things by using our senses.  Our eyes help us see, our hands help us feel, our mouth helps us taste, our ears help us hear, and our nose helps us smell things. We can tell if things are the same or different by using our senses, and we can group things together that are alike.  Many times we will use several of our senses.   If we’re looking at flowers, we can look, smell, and touch the flower.

ACTIVITY:  play “The 5 Questions Game” with various objects from all the five groups.  Ask, “Can you see it?  Can you feel it?  Can you hear it?  Can you smell it?  Can you taste it?”

ACTIVITY:  Have an assortment of various seeds or dried beans.  Have the students sort the seeds/beans in different ways.  For example, sort them by colors, then sort by shapes, and then sort by size.

ACTIVITY:  Put some objects in a brown paper bag.  Let students feel the objects inside the bag and guess what they are.

ACTIVITY:  Matching Game.  Have small pictures of ears, eyes, mouth, hands, and nose.  Glue each picture on an index card.  Write each of these words on an index card:  hear, see, taste, feel, smell.  Have student match the pictures with the corresponding word.

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1.  KNOWLEDGE

• Recalling of information such as places, dates, and events (who, what, when, where, how)
• Knowledge of subject matter, main ideas, basic concepts and principles
• Memorizing

2.  COMPREHENSION

• Understanding meaning
• Applying knowledge in a different context
• Simple comparing and contrasting
• Making inferences
• Predicting outcomes
• Describing in one’s own words
• Making interpretations
• Making sumarizations

3.  APPLICATION

• Problem solving
• Applying what has been learned through exhibits, demonstrations, graphs, charts, etc.
• Using information, concepts, and methods in different situations
• Using facts to answer questions such as “How is ___ related to ___?”

4.  ANALYSIS

• Dividing a whole into its component parts
• Outlining and diagramming
• Identifying literary elements and breaking the story down into different parts
• Distinguishing between inferences and actual facts
• Analyzing components of an event in history
• Identifying motives and hidden meanings
• Separating the components of the scientific process
• Seeing patterns
• Teacher asks questions such as “What is the order of steps in ___?”  or “What are the functions of ___?”  or “How does ___ compare/contrast with —?”

5.  SYNTHESIS

• Using already existing concepts to create new concepts or ideas
• Creating and designing something new and original.  This could be a short story, poem, music, plan for an experiment, new way of classifying ideas, etc.
• Combining information from several sources
• Finding solutions
• Teacher asks questions such as “How would you create a new ___?”  or “What ideas can you add?”

6.  EVALUATION

• Comparing ideas
• Developing opinions and judgments
• Judging the value of something for a given purpose, based on definite criteria
• Resolving differences of opinion
• Making value decisions about issues
• Teacher asks questions such as “Do you agree?”  or “What do you think is most important?”

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