MIXING

Green Room Summer Camp 2017

Week 5

Mud!

Making mud pies has to be the quintessential activity for every kid. The Green Room class set up a mud kitchen for just this purpose. Using an old sensory table filled with mud, some clay in a bucket, a pail of sawdust, sticks, stones, and some artificial flowers children baked all sorts of lovely mud recipes. Some of the recipes were written down and illustrated for those interested. Here's one: (coming soon)

As a follow up activity children made "dirt cups" for afternoon snack by mixing chocolate pudding topped with crushed Oreo and a gummy worms.

Dr. Daniels Returns

This time Dr. Daniels, our scientist grandfather, had the children mix two liquids, water and oil, to see that they really did not mix well at all, not even when the campers shook them up. Next the children were instructed to add dish soap to the mix and found it broke the oil up into small pieces and formed bubbles at the top of the mixture. Later using old water bottles the children recreated this activity adding glitter and sequins to float around in the oil and water. It was fun to shake up the mixture and watch the action.

Mixing Ideas

CYC director Dr. Guha has done some collaboration with theCollege of Information Studies & Human-Computer interaction Lab, at the University of Maryland and was able to share some of her techniques to help the children mix ideas.

She used these methods to help the children come up with a culminating activity for the end of the summer mixing study. To begin with each child came up with their own idea. Taking these ideas, Dr. Guha paired similar ideas together and had those teams work together to combine the two similar ideas. The children used a clip board to draw what they were thinking and an adult helped write their words.

After analyzing these combined ideas Dr. Guha organized them into something that would work for a culmination. Many of the ideas included demonstrating or showing specific mixing activities to their families specifically, bubbles, gak, muffins, mud pies, and Dr. Daniels experiments. One team's party and games idea turned out to be the glue for these and it was decided that different stations would be set up in the room manned by the children who would demonstrate these activities at a mixing party for families.

A second meeting confirmed this mixing of ideas as the right way to go about the culmination and children signed up for specific activities to be in charge of.

Gazpacho

The book Gazpacho for Nacho by Tracey C. Kyle was the catalyst and excuse to take a field trip to the local farmers market to purchase the ingredients for the soup. The class, accompanied by several parents, trekked to the middle of campus where the Campus Farmers Market sets up every Wednesday. The children chose tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, an onion, and some basil for the ingredients. In addition a box of very large black berries and a baguette were purchased to add to the snack..

The following day, children helped chop up the vegetables and mix them into a delicious and nutritious afternoon meal.

Tie Dye

Each summer, tie dye is a very popular activity and even a day is reserved for children to wear their hand made shirts. Tie dying is a natural for a mixing study since several colors are needed and spread and blend together to make new designs and colors. After watching a how-to video from youtube, campers twisted a spiral shape in their tee shirts, attached rubber-bands around the shape and chose four different colors to apply to their neat little package. The colors blended and mixed to form unique designs for each child. These shirts will be worn on the last day of camp which is designated as "tie dye" day.

Teacher's Corner

Lesson Plan

Maryland Early Learning Standards

Music. Respond to music through movement

Every Wednesday the Green Room has music with Ms. Kendall. She starts every class with stretches to a different kind of music genre. She provides instruments for the children and active movement and freeze dances. You can see the children engaged in a parachute activity above. Children are encouraged to feel the music and move accordingly.

Science D. Physical and Chemical Changes 1.Provide evidence from investigations to identify processes that can be used to change physical properties of materials. This was taken from the 2nd grade standard because there was nothing that would fit the chemistry investigations the campers were doing in the earlier standards.

One of Dr. Daniels experiments used baking soda, water, raisins, and vinegar. When the vinegar and baking soda reacted together to form carbon dioxide, the raisins appeared to be alive and bobbed up and down in the transparent jar showing a change in it's physical properties. Children learned the words "chemical reaction".

Literacy I10:Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding

This week's stories focused on folk tales from Asian countries. Two Japanese versions of the same story were read. One had a female protagonist the other a male. Children are encouraged to raise a quiet hand to share observations, comments or questions with the group while the story is being read.

Writing W5:With guidance and support from adults, respond to questions and suggestions from peers and add details to strengthen writing as needed

Children worked in small groups and finally in a whole group to narrow down their ideas about how to culminate their study taking into consideration each child's ideas.

Math K.OA.2:Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within ten

During some transitions children would throw a dice and combine numbers to make a number sentence while at the same time relating those numbers to real objects such as Sally had 3 cookies and Jane had 2, how many all together. They wrote the numbers on the board and helped each other figure the problem out i.e. 3 +2 = 5.

Copy right 2017 Vera Wiest