Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Solar System

Are there any good ideas out there about the solar system for kindergarten? My kids love brainpop.com and we do unitedstreaming videos everyday. Any craft projects?

1 comment:

  1. Astronomy is a forte of mine. One of the things i do in my highschool class is talk about the ingredients for life. It is a common theory that bombardment of the early Earth with comets seeded it with the necessary compunds for life. In addition to this i teach them the various parts of a comet.
    How to make a comet
    Materials
    1 garbage bag
    1 mixing bowl with a spoon
    insulated gloves
    5-10lbs of dry ice
    dirt
    corn syrup to symbolize carbon/organic molecules

    i also use ammonia to symbolize the ammonia that comets possess in their composition

    And some water but really all that you need is dirt, water and some crushed/powdered dry ice

    Add about 5ooml of powdered dry ice to the bowl a little bit of dirt and syrup for color, and half as much water as you used dry ice maybe a third as much. Mix it together in your mixing bowl lined with a garbage bag and gather up the slurry of materials. Then you want to crush it down hard and form it with your hands, crush and hold, crush and hold. Be sure to let the gas escape or you will get a face full of dirt and dry ice and water. When you feel that it has gotten hard pull out the comet and show to the class. As the dry ice sublimates it creates a coma around the comet and you can discuss the various parts of the comet. The whole process is visually pretty cool. Again i use this demo to talk about the theory that comets seeded the Earth with the ingrediants for life so in my class when we make them we use our giant slingshot of science to launch them at a big wooden picture of the earth i set up outside.

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