November 13, 2012

The Science Lab has been a busy place!
     On Friday, the fifth grade conducted an investigation into the properties of play goo that results with varying amounts of ingredients.  They made flubber, flak and slimy stuff.  The learned that the more Borax you add to the glue water the more solid and less sticky the play goo becomes.  Mrs. Brunning learned to always put down paper on the desk before ever doing this experiment again.

     On Thursday, the fourth grade had a guest presentation by Dr. Perkins.  She spoke about the function and structure of the human body, especially the liver, gall bladder and spleen.  She had a model of a liver with normal and diseased sections.  Students also viewed fresh beef liver sections.

     Seventh grade used an interactive tutorial at http://learner.org/interactives/periodic/index.htm l to review what they had studied about atoms and the periodic table.
     Sixth grade has been using an interactive all last week and today from the same site to review the "Dynamic Earth", introduce "Volcanoes" and the "Rock Cycle".  The links are at:
 http://www.learner.org/interactives/dynamicearth/
http://www.learner.org/interactives/volcanoes/
http://www.learner.org/interactives/rockcycle/index.html

This site has a number of interesting interactives in a variety of disciplines and grade levels, just go to:  http://www.learner.org/interactives/   and search.

Today, the middle school math students participated in the American Mathematics Competition.  The competition is national and involves taking a test of 25 multiple choice math problems.  They will be scored by the Mathematical Association of America and ranked nationally and at the school level.  Results will be available next month.  This is a competition we chose to have students participate in to get a better sense of their math ability on a larger scale.

Next week is Night of the Notables and Wax Museum.  Science Fair will move forward after that event is complete, the main focus right now is preparing for Night of the Notables and Wax Museum. 
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