Adventures In STEM

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Hard to believe these images were taken right after a storm. 

We made Kinetic Sand yesterday.  It was an interesting experiment for us to try.  You need sand, dawn dish soap, water, and corn starch.  You mix them together and wait a couple of hours for the chemical reaction to take place.  Through trial and error we finally got the right substance and were able to play with this sand.  We built a tower.  Now you might be asking what can I use this sand for.  Well you can challenge the students/kids by having them create or engineer structures to see how long they last.  You could link this with a book about Egypt and have the students build a pyramid.  There are several different options for Kinetic Sand.  Let your exploration begin.  Here is the link for the Kinetic Sand:  http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2015/01/homemade-kinetic-sand.html

The Wizard of OZ and Science. By: Heidi Wunschel How much do you believe in transportation based on the weather?  Can you be transported by a tornado to a different world? These questions have always had me wondering if it was possible like in the Wizard of Oz.  I feel like I should offer you some background information about the movie in case you don’t know what it is about. It is a movie that was created in 1939 by Warner Brothers and it is still a popular movie till this day.  It is about a girl named Dorothy and her little dog. They live in tornado alley. A tornado was coming and she didn’t have time to take cover. The tornado swept her and her dog up and transported them to the Land of Oz. Here is a preview of the movie so that you might get a visualization of the land of oz: Now there are several interesting things that I have noticed about this movie like how it goes from black and white to color, tornadoes causing a girl to end up in an...

I started my blog about STEM but really felt that I needed to do more research in order to fully understand what and how it was created.  I found out that in the early 2000's we in the United States were preforming or achieving at a lower rate then other countries.  This resulted in a push in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematical fields. This resulted in a push for teachers to work on teaching these skills to students.  I found out that it was a struggle at first because there was not really a curriculum for this.  " Six states received grants from the  National Governors Association to pursue three key strategies: (1) to align state K-12 (kindergarten through 12th grade) standards, assessments, and requirements with post-secondary and workforce expectations; (2) to examine and increase each state’s internal capacity to improve  teaching  and  learning , including the continued development of data systems and new models ...

This afternoon we built this Solar Car. My 9 year old daughter and I worked on it. I read the instructions and she built it.

What activities can you do in the summer with kids? You could sign them up for a camp. You could join the Coding club at the Library, you could draw with chalk, or create a rocket, most importantly you could watch the stars. We as parents need to get our children active and engaged with there surroundings.

Hello, Today we went for a bike ride to our local lake.  When arriving we were able to make scientific observations like when the wind stops blowing the mosquito's will start biting you and how the carp were jumping from one water source to another.  We were able to use both engineering and science this morning in our discoveries.  Often times I don't think that kids or adults take time out of their days to really observe their surroundings.  We have a gift and we need to enjoy it.