Hands on Learning

 We had a lot of fun this week with some great hands on learning.  Sorry no pics my hands were full of crisco...  Confused, let me tell you about it. Part of the grade two science unit is learning about how animals change in order to survive. It doesn't go into too great of detail as in grade four but the students learn that their are adaptations that animals need in order to live.  We talk about how some of those adaptations are physical and some are behavioral. To help with this we did two experiments with the kids this week.  

The first is call MACKI Hunters: For this game the students became hunters of macaroni, which I had about hundred or so in different colours.  I threw these MACKIES onto the field and told them that in order to survive they had to get at least ten in two minutes.  Of course they all survived.  We talked about why that would be and what could possibly make it harder.  The next time, I split the groups up into the three colours (red, blue, green) and then told them to get ten.  This ended up having some of the students not surviving. The last time I did it I had three of the students become hunters of the children.  All of the students only had to get five but they couldn't get touched and had to make it back to me in order to be safe.  This ended in only three of the students surviving.  We had some great discussions about how animals survive and what animals need in order to survive. 

 The next experiment was understanding physical adaptations.  For this experiment you need Crisco, gloves, ice and two buckets of water.  You first put the ice in the water and put the crisco in one glove.  Side Note: I do find it easier to put the Crisco in a ziplock bag and then another ziplock bag over top of this.  This way the child's hand just goes inside of the clean bag.  However, the kids have fun getting messy.  Next the students have one hand in the ice water and one hand in the crisco bag/glove and that is in the ice water.  Students soon discover how cold one hand is versus the other.  They start to make the connection between how polar bears have blubber to keep them warm just like the Crisco does to their hands. As you can tell I couldn't take any pictures as my hands where also covered in Crisco; however, it was a lot of fun and worth the experience.