***Visitation Catholic STEM Academy's*** Fun-Tastic First and Second Grade!: January 2014

Today we had an exciting lesson about liquids. We've been studying solids and liquids for the past few weeks and in today's lesson, we observed oil and water. Students made a hypothesis of what they thought would happen when we put colored ice cubes (a solid) into oil (a liquid). Students used their prior knowledge of ice and water and made some great generalizations of what they thought would happen. Once we made these predictions, we poured oil into a large vase and dropped in about 6-8 ice cubes. Students quickly observed that the colored ice began to melt and that it didn't mix with the oil. Each drop of water slowly moved through the oil as a bubble to the bottom. Students came to the realization that the water must be heavier to fall to the bottom and that the oil was lighter. I helped scaffold the students to come to the conclusion that oil and water don't mix and that is why the oil never changed colors. Many students predicted that when the colored ice would melt, it would change the color of the oil. Students thought this was fun but they had even more fun with the next activity....we used the ice cubes to water color. Each student got a special glove to wear for holding the ice cube. Not only did the glove help their hand stay warm but it prevented them from getting the dye on their hands. We completed the lesson with only a drop or two of color on one or two students shirts. I even managed to stay completely color free while wearing a white blouse...."not sure how that happened." It must have been because I begged them to keep their hands to themselves...haha and it worked! We had such a blast today learning about weird science!