To start the year off I always like to do a unit to get the students excited about science. We begin by reading a book titled, What is a Scientist? We then brainstorm a list of things that scientists do and make a classroom anchor chart with all of the students' ideas (thank you Pinterest!)
The next day, we discuss all of the tools that scientists use. I set up stations for the students to rotate through where they can get hands-on with the different scientific tools. The kids LOVE this!! It is so great to see them exploring the classroom. When they have rotated through all of the stations, we do a tool sort to identify the name of the tools and their purpose.
We also talk about the scientific method. There is a great video on BrainPopJr that introduces the basic steps and gives examples of each. Once we have watched the video and discussed the process, we go over the steps using these posters I found on Teachers Pay Teachers. After going over them, the students got an individual copy and glued the steps in order.
Finally, we designed our own experiment using the steps in the scientific process. We completed a foldable that took us through each of the steps. We did the "Mentos" experiment because it is always a fun way to grab the students' attention! For those of you who haven't heard of it before, our question is, "What will happen if we drop Mentos into Coke?". The answer is, "It explodes!!!" The kids love it! I tried to take some pictures but we didn't get it at the right time. Here are some I found online that show the same results.
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