Something I never thought I'd see.

It was a myth, something I'd only heard could happen.  It was finally cold enough, we were just silly enough and we had all the right tools.  A cup, hot water, a camera and the cold weather.





Yeah for Alaska and the cold.  You'll never see that in Oregon!  (I hope!)

Do you see what they see?

The eyes of a child can sometimes show us what we are missing.  They can enlighten us to what we skim over, forget what we once saw, or sometimes......what isn't even there.  For the rest of the year, I'm not only teaching high school, I'm teaching elementary school science and history as well.  My high school kids are being taught writing by the other teacher here and during that time, I get the little ones.  Through their eyes, I'm sure I will learn just as much about the world, the way they learn and about myself and my teaching style as they could ever learn from me.

That being said, a story for your enjoyment.

Evaporation.  One way to separate a mixture.

Our mixture on Wednesday was water and epsom salt.  They were amazed at how quickly the water and salt combined to form the mixture of a solid and a liquid.  The salt seemed to dissapear.  Where did it go?  How do we get it apart again?  Some of the other methods we had used wouldn't work and they were skeptical that this new way would.  I told them we'd check on it tomorrow.  So we did.  Nothing really changed, still "all water".

Over the weekend, because we didn't have science on Friday, of course the water finally evaporated and left behind beautiful crystals of salt.  I was excited for their reaction as they were about to see that the water had disappeared into the air and left behind the solid that we had added to the mixture before.  Not to disappoint me, they came with great reactions.  WOW!  What is that?!  Is that really what's left?!  It looks like a snowflake!

Epsom Salt Crystals

We chatted about it, I let them touch it and then immediately wash their hands and then I pulled out the microscope.  Oh goodness, you would have thought I was royalty!  They loved every minute of it.  After some time looking at the crystals and seeing it look like wood or a sideways river, they began to see pictures in it.  I'm not quite sure where salt crystals turn into bears eating fish in a river but that's what they saw today.  There were also animal heads, birds amongst other creatures.  I tried, I really did.  I even showed them how to move the little pointer to show me just where they were talking about.  I just couldn't see it.

Maybe through the eyes of a child we see new and exciting things.  Much like I see Egegik in a new way that the people who have lived here their whole lives don't anymore.  Today though, it just wasn't happening for me.  Maybe another day.

Being a kid

One can say that children grow up and get too old for things but we all know that this can possibly be true. After all, Disney is still fun for adults too right?  I see the light in my student's eyes and it warms my heart.  They have much to learn and enjoy the play while learning.  Each time I see the light bulb moment it's heartwarming.  Each time I see the innocent play, it makes you think that all in the world could be right if we all chose to make it a good place to live.

Just swinging away.  Such a nice day we had to be outside for a few.

Bet you can't climb up the pole!

We have been working on genetics, Punnett squares and DNA in Science.  Making some DNA keychains in class on Friday the kids learned about phosphate and sugar and that ATGC are always paired in certain ways.  They got to make up their own genetic code but had to follow the rules.  We then got to twist them to make a double helix.  Following directions creates a pretty cool keychain.

Not following the directions makes a genetic mutant DNA strand.  *The inside and outside there are supposed to be attached.  Someone in class didn't follow directions.  They keychain still looked cool in the end but we found out that it just was a genetic defect and they decided it was Super AIDS.  This resulted in a discussion and some more education.  My ending thought was that they had indeed watched too much South Park.






Have a good one!