Ooops… that should have read… Freezing an Unforgettable Science Experience in the Minds of Young Children (but the first one is so much more catchy…)

I spend a lot of time training early childhood teachers in ways to make science more fun and meaningful in their classrooms. Gone are the days of collecting leaves in a plastic baggie and calling it science. Today, the best early childhood professionals are pulling out the stops and do everything possible to expose their children to real science. Of course, with real science comes real fun. Nan Papiernik and Beth Dovenspike from Colorado College Children’s Center are both amazing early childhood science teachers who are reaching out to the community and finding real science experience for their children. Nan and Beth called upon Professor Kristina Lang from Colorado College to introduce children to the concept of changing temperature to make things freeze. What could be better than using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream?

The genius part of this strategy is… Read the rest of this entry »

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If you’ve ever enjoyed wearing a bottle of Diet Coke after dropping in a roll of Mentos, you know that the reaction is immediate. I’ve always thought that it would be cool if you could slow everything down and really look at the reaction. I shared the idea with our friends at Mentos and they shot this slow motion video. There are a few frames where you can see the carbon dioxide gas coming out of solution being attracted to the tiny pits (nucleation sites) on the surface of the mint. For the tech-nerds in the audience, a Phantom 9.0 high-speed digital camera from Vision Research (2,000 frames per second) captured the slow-motion footage.

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Here’s an idea from one of our Minnesota Hands-on Science Ambassadors, Lisa Schoneman, using Pearl Swirl Solution:

I use pearl swirl to make behavior bottles. I shake the bottle up and put it on the table near the “Take a Break” chair (time out). I tell them they need to sit there until the bottle has stopped moving and then they can either come back to the group and join us, if they are or they can shake the bottle one more time. When they are done with the bottle they are ready to join us back in the group.

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