Mad Scientist Day! That is severely probably the greatest days of the yr in my classroom! As a category, my college students have the chance to earn factors for wonderful behaviour and wonderful studying – with the factors going in direction of incomes additional wonderful studying days!!! Mad Scientist Day is our first one of many yr.
That is my second yr doing Mad Scientist Day. This yr I switched up the actions a bit. Final yr we had Mad Scientist Day the day earlier than Halloween, so our actions had been very Halloween based mostly. This yr, that would not have labored. All of our actions are aligned with the science strands we examine through the yr, so that they have a bit data to attract from once we get to the actual items.
I “set the stage to have interaction” first. A enjoyable costume and some props did the trick – one thing fast and simple to arrange. College students had been additionally invited to decorate up as Mad Scientists for the day.
Our first exercise was a STEM exercise for making catapults (tie in to Easy Machines – levers). I divided my class into small teams and gave every group a plastic spoon, two popsicle sticks and masking tape. They had been additionally allowed to make use of something of their desks. Final yr, earlier than Halloween, I had small plastic rats to make use of because the load and we known as our catapults, “ratapults”. This yr we used hershey kisses and “chucked chocolate”. I gave them round quarter-hour to construct their catapults. As soon as we had been performed, we had a chucking chocolate competitors. College students needed to measure the space they may “chuck their chocolate” in metres and centimetres. Every group had 3 makes an attempt, after which we in contrast and ordered the distances (YAY for a math tie-in!!!).
Subsequent, the little Mad Scientists acquired to smash some rocks – cracking open geodes for our tie-in to Rocks and Minerals. I purchased some geode kits from Amazon (affiliate hyperlink to the product under). This was positively the WOW exercise for the scholars. It positively took a while to get via the entire class, so I used the time to take some superior footage of my college students dressed as mad scientists sitting behind the prop desk.
As we accomplished every exercise, college students labored in a bit Mad Scientist booklet I made for the day (the AWESOME clip artwork was a part of the Mad Scientist Set by Melonheadz Illustrating – you’ll be able to see it HERE). For every exercise we needed to fill in “What we Did” and “What we Realized”. You’ll be able to obtain a replica of this booklet I made HERE (only a word – it is not editable if you’re doing completely different actions, however it could possibly positively function inspiration).
Subsequent up was Making Blood Fashions (tie in to Human Physique unit). I’ve blogged about this as a full lesson earlier than – you’ll be able to see this weblog publish HERE. Every pupil had a water bottle. We added a drop of yellow meals coloring to the water for the plasma. Then we added cheerios (dyed pink with a full bottle of meals dye) for the pink blood cells. Mini marshmallows had been added for the white blood cells, and we used small circles of paper from the outlet punch for platelets. We watched a Brainpop video on blood earlier than we made our fashions to additional our studying. The scholars LOVE this one!
For our final exercise, we needed to blow one thing up! Mentos and coke match the invoice – and was a enjoyable tie-in to Matter and Supplies. I’ve wished to do that FOREVER! A lot enjoyable! We added 7 mentos to a bottle of coke (I learn on-line that 7 is the right quantity) and watched the enjoyable!
Mad Scientist Day was an ideal method to reward college students with an superior day of studying they are going to make sure to keep in mind. Engaged college students LEARN. Interval.
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