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.