I love science day.

I live in a very suburban town, with easy access to our smallish capital city. As a teacher, I want to always engage my students in meaningful learning and maybe give them some new ideas. Friday was I Love Science Day at my school, and students rotated between 4 of the fifth grade classrooms to do a variety of "cool" science activities. Mine was making lemonade.... yes, you heard me correctly - we made lemonade.

I brought in my lemon tree that is potted and on my deck - it was a gift last mother's day. I explained how it bloomed, and turned into lemons (answered questions about why they were green not yellow), and then showed them the pictures over at http://urbanhomestead.org/journal and discussed how people were really focusing on ea

ting healthier, and eating whole foods, etc. I then put them into groups and gave them a few lemons to juice, we pooled our juice together, added water and sugar (discussed if this was a mixture or solution), and then drank it. Some of them didn't like pulp, and remember from our chemistry unit this year that you could filtrate mixtures/solutions to remove larger pieces, so we pulled out coffee filters and the tri-pod funnel for them to try out. We discussed the taste differences between their idea of lemondade (crystals in a plastic container) and the one we made.

They then harvested the seeds from the lemons, and planted them, or some of the bean, or corn seeds I also had. All were interested in the idea of how we define food now, and I feel like maybe eventually I can show students, by example, how to make better choices. I wish I could show the student faces, but I just don't feel that is ethical, but I will tell you they were full of smiles.


For Mother's Day today, I received a gorgeous little orange tree, and I'm looking forward to showing that to my students too. My family definitely knows how to make me happy!