Oobleck!
The summer countdown has officially reached the single digits! I honestly can't believe that this year has flown by SO fast. I guess, looking back, a ton has happened during the school year and I've kept myself so busy every afternoon and weekend that I've just constantly been on the go. I suppose that helped the progress.
My kids took their SOL test on the 7th, and since then, I've been looking for fun things to do in class so they don't go crazy from summer fever/exhaustion from all their other SOL tests. (The 8th grade had a 92% pass rate, by the way. Yay, us!) The nice thing about all this extra time on my hands is that I can go back and revisit questions the kids had earlier in the year that we didn't have time to address because of time constraints. I try to fill these last few weeks of school with labs and episodes of Mythbusters, which is always a big hit.
Today, we got to do one of my favorite lessons to share with my kids and we had so much fun, it was a surprise when the bell rang at the end of class. I love days that go by quickly because we completely lose track of time!
We started things out with story time. Channeling my days of student teaching 2nd grade, I read Bartholomew and the Oobleck and displayed the illustrations in a slow, sweeping motion. One of my classes literally moved as close to me as possible as if we were all back in elementary school and they kept trying to predict what would happen in the story before I turned the page. They're so silly... which is why I love them so much.
After reading the story, we set out to make Oobleck, the substance in the book that falls from the sky and threatens to ruin the Kingdom of Didd. Looking online, a ton of websites refer to Oobleck as that cornstarch and water mixture that pours like a liquid but can be picked up like a solid. But several years ago, I found a "recipe" for Oobleck that uses glue, water, and Borax to make a substance more like slime (or Gak, for the 90's kids). After reading the Dr. Seuss story, this sounded a lot more like what rained down on the kingdom and for the sake of being "historically accurate", we stuck with the slime version.
The kids combined and glue/water mixture and Borax/water solution in bags, along with their choice of food coloring, and kneaded the ingredients together. I think the most fun I had was seeing the color combinations they created.
We spent the remainder of the time playing and discovering all the things you can do with Oobleck. You can blow bubbles in it and it bounces, stretches, and oozes. To make it relevant to class, we related this back to states of matter and making observations using their senses (except for, you know, taste).
At the end of each class, I made them solemnly swear not to take the Oobleck out during other classes or get themselves in trouble on the bus ride home. It cracked me up when students would periodically visit me throughout the day to proudly announce that they hadn't gotten in trouble yet! I'm glad they were taking their oath so seriously.
I only wish that I could incorporate Dr. Seuss books into more of my lessons. If anyone ever has any ideas, I'm always open to suggestions!