Science Fair

The dreaded, REQUIRED, annual Science Fair project is due on Thursday. Our first graders LOVE LOVE LOVE Science, and we think it's pretty awesome too! However, something about the word required makes it not-so-fun for teachers. In k-2 at our school the class does a project together. This year we asked the question, "Which liquid stains teeth the most?" We are using hard boiled eggs (the shell is made of calcium, very similar to our tooth enamel) and a few of our favorite sugary drinks to find our results.

Before we went too far into what our project was all about, we decided to tackle the SCIENTIFIC METHOD with our firsties. We created an anchor chart together to explain the steps scientists use.

We suggest incorporating a lot of WHOLE BRAIN teaching when explaining these steps to your students. Fancy words like HYPOTHESIS can be very tricky for first graders to say, let alone understand. Trust us, the more whole brain learning... the better. 

Today we wrote out our question: "Which liquid stains teeth the most?"

Next we wrote down our Hypothesis. Most students think coffee will stain teeth the most. Even our student's were saying, "Oh no! Ms. Peterson and Ms. Prussing are in trouble. They love coffee"

We put one egg into each of the four liquids (coffee, grape juice, sweet tea and Root Beer). The eggs are going to soak in the liquids for the next few days. Tomorrow we plan on making observations and recording our data from day 1 and day 2. 

More Science Fair fun to come!