Earth Day Update

I had clipped a list of Earth Day sites from the Boston Globe's weekly column Surfing the Net with Kids and couldn't find them the other day. In cleaning up my pile today I unearthed them just like a good archeologist would. Here they are since you could use some of them any day of the year.

1. EcoKids- a site from Canada's youth education program about the environment.
2. Kids Domain: Earth Day- this site gives a history behind the creation of Earth Day as well as games, activities, clip art and more.
3. Kids for Saving the Earth- this is a environmental kids' club created by Clinton Hill before his death from cancer at the age of 11. His mother is carrying on his mission to get kids involved in saving the planet.
4. NASA: Earth Science Enterprise: For Kids Only- NASA has created this site with information, lesson plans and games for teachers and students.
5. The Wilderness Society: Earth Day- photojournalist John Dunne's study of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Let's face it everyday should be Earth Day!

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Gum Drops and Toothpicks - Squares vs. Triangles

Recently in my after school Science with Everyday Objects class we tried out some engineering experiments. We discussed using squares versus triangles as basic building blocks for structures. Then the kids created their structures and we tested how well they could bear weight. We used books and toy cars as weights. The strongest structure held 6.5 pounds (as weighed on a kitchen scale)and could have gone on except we ran out of toy cars to pile on top. Then we tried spaghetti and marshmellos. Not as successful. The spaghetti was too brittle and broke when they tried working with it. The kids still had fun trying. See ZOOM for this and other building project ideas.

Ethanol Gasoline Additives

Today I filled my car for the first time with gasoline with the new Ethanol additive and started wondering how you could study this in the classroom. I went searching for information on the Web and here are a couple of good websites I found.

1. How Stuff Works - explains what gasoline additives are and their history starting with lead
2. Department of Energy - good description of ethanol and where it comes from

You can also do some neat experiments with Yeast (the producers of ethanol). Yeast are an important class of fungi and very helpful to humans. There are many other products besides ethanol that they help to produce (bread, yogurt, and cheese to name a few). Check out the following sites.

1. Yeast Experiments - for older students
2. KidWizard - for younger students and a way to study other by products of the fermentation process (i.e. carbon dioxide).
3. Herbarium - a similar experiment to the one above but with a twist. This experiment also provides a control sample. Put a drop of each solution on a microscope slide with some stain and compare the number of colonies from each sample.

Lastly, if you want to do some math related activities why not chart gasoline prices over a period of time (introduce students to Excel or other spreadsheet programs). Try to discover why there is such a fluctuation in prices (weather, war, politics, increase use due to summertime travel).

National DNA Day

April 25th is National DNA Day celebrating the completion of the Human Genome Project and the 50th anniversary of the description of DNA's double helix. There will be online Webcasts from the National Human Genome Research Institue see http://www.genome.gov/DNAday.

Classroom ideas for studying DNA:

1. visit TryScience:
   http://www.tryscience.org/experiments/experiments_begin.html?dna
2. visit Origins at Exploratorium:
   http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/coldspring/index.html
3. visit OLogy at the American Museum of Natural History:
   http://ology.amnh.org/genetics/index.html - this site includes several ideas for off-line projects to do in the classroom like DNA in a blender and a DNA model.

Girl Scouting-Studio 2B has a new interest patch which includes an activity for extracting DNA from fruit which you can do in the kitchen (or classroom for that matter). See http://www.studio2b.org/lounge/gs_stuff/ip_evidence.asp for activity directions.

Earth Day 2006

With Earth Day coming up, my Cub Scout den recently participated in our town's annual Spring Clean-Up. To extend the boys' learning about the impact of pollution on our environment we read Lynne Cherry's A River Ran Wild, the history of the Nashua River which runs through our community. (Lynne's site is http://www.lynnecherry.com and she has several other nature related titles.) You can visit http://www.nashuariverwatershed.org to learn more about this environmental project.
In the classroom students can learn more about the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts by visiting http://www.epa.gov/r5water/cwa.htm for older students and http://www.epa.gov/kids for elementary aged students.
There are many ways for students to extend their learning of how pollution impacts our lives and health. Some research topics could include: increasing asthma rates in urban areas, ground water contamination, communities with unusually high cancer rates, the impact of bottle bills, recycling efforts and products made from recycled materials, global warming, alternative fuels, and the list goes on.
It is important to remind students that science isn't only something to study, but something to be lived.