Each group had a food source (beads, noodles, rice, cotton balls, mini-rocks, etc) and various utensils to pick it up (tweezers, clothespin, straw, spoon, toothpick). Before the lab they had to rank the utensils in order of which one would get the most food. They had a cup as their 'stomach' and 30 seconds to gather as much of the food as possible. Then they'd count how much food they got and record the data. We only got through about half the food sources, so we'll pick it up again on Friday. They had a good time and learned some things about being careful with tippy objects... one group tipped their plate and dropped all the little beads on the desks/floor. Oops. Major cleanup.
The 5-6th graders were bummed they didn't get to do a lab, but we did go off on an interesting tangent today in science. Our topic was nutrients in food (carbs, proteins, starches, cellulose). We got to talking about cellulose and how human bodies can't digest it very well, or at least can't get much nutrients from it. That led to a discussion about going #2 and the parts of a digestive system. Then we moved on to compare animal and human digestive systems... Parts of that digression were planned, but we did delve further into human anatomy than I'd anticipated. Still, they were totally interested in it. So much so that I believe we'll learn about the digestive system more tomorrow!
NaNos are going well. I didn't finish mine; I'm on track though. Bible study tonight got cancelled, so perhaps I'll finish. A few of my kiddos reached their goals already. A bunch of them have met their goals but aren't finished with the story yet. They'll keep writing in December too. A few are going to up their goals as a challenge to complete in the next two days. My poky writer was home sick today. I asked her mom to make sure she writes. Hopefully she got a lot done!
No comments:
Post a Comment