Blog Post 15

 This week in lab we focused on a couple different things. First we talked about making inferences and observations. We did this by reading an awesome children's book about aliens. For our activity, we were given a film canister and was instructed to go around the room and try to find someone who we thought had the same item inside their canister. I was certain that Darcy and I had the same item in our canisters until we found out we were definitely wrong. I thought we both had a wooden block in our canisters yet I had a Dye, and she had a nickel. This frustrated me at first but then I remembered that this is how my students will feel. And that it is alright to be wrong sometimes. It's all apart of the learning process! Then we did a cool activity involving a marshmallow and a syringe. This activity taught us about air pressure. At first we put a marshmallow in the syringe and pull the syringe back while putting our finger over the hole on the end. This caused a vacuum which was scrunching up our marshmallow making it smaller. Then when you pushed it back in, the marshmallow began to expand. Our activities this week were very insightful and helped me understand our learning topics way better!  

I would love to bring the marshmallow activity to my future classroom. I loved how we put smiley faces on the marshmallows because it showed the face crunch up, and expend which really helped demonstrate what was happening. I think this would be beneficial to my future students for understanding air pressure. I also think it would not be very expensive making it easy to bring into the class as well. 

Some questions I have about the observation activity are, Why is it when we first hear two sounds of different objects our brain thinks it is the same, but then what we see what objects are in there, we can distinctly tell the difference in the sounds? Another question I have is where can I get film canisters? Because this activity was awesome and would love to do this with my future students!