As you know, our challenge for the STREAM Expo was to take a treat and make it healthier.  The students voted to make cinnamon cookies.  We made them 4 different ways: substituting maple syrup for part of the sugar, substituting honey for part of the sugar, substituting applesauce for part of the fat, and substituting with both maple syrup and applesauce. 

I brought our batter home to bake the cookies and today the students stopped by to do a blind taste test and vote on their favorite.  The winner is..... #4- with maple syrup and applesauce.  This was the healthiest choice as well!!
We will be making more to bring to the Expo on December 4th. If you have not yet told me whether you are coming, please do so asap.  Thank you!

Capillary Action

We learned about Capillary Action by draping a folded paper towel between a cup filled with colored water and an empty cup.

The colored water traveled up the paper towel into the empty cup.

Each child experimented with capillary action by placing a Smartie on a coffee filter and then dripping water on top.

It is hard to see, but the colors from the Smarties spread out as the water was attracted towards the edge of the filter. 

We continued engineering structures to hold books.  After the first trial where the strongest structure held 25 books, the students had a second chance to design a better structure based on what they had observed.  So far the strongest one held 50, but we didn't have a chance to test them all.

We All Scream for Ice Cream!

To learn about states of matter and chemical reactions, we made ice cream in a bag: Put 1/2 and 1/2 , sugar, and vanilla in a ziploc bag.  Put it into a bigger ziploc bag with ice and salt and shake for 15 to 20 minutes. 

Everyone thought the ice cream was great.

The salt mixed with ice got colder than ice cubes without salt and allowed us to make ice cream.  We experimented by making up one bag with salt and one without and then passed them around the circle.  Everyone agreed that the ice/salt mixture felt much colder.  

We had extra time to do an engineering challenge: fold a piece of construction paper into a column that will support books placed upon it. 

The students worked in teams and used trial and error.

This team is testing its column.  Each team submitted its best column and we measured the strength by adding books one at a time.  So far the strongest column supported 25 paperback books!

Physical and Chemical Changes

A physical change is a change in size, shape or appearance but not in substance.  Some examples we witnessed were: ripping paper, flattening a ball of Play-doh, and a melting ice cube.  Above we are drawing a balloon before and after it is blown up.

We agreed that making chocolates from chocolate wafers was a physical change.  

We melted the wafers and poured it into candy molds with Halloween sprinkles.

Then we chilled the chocolate until it was hard.  The substance didn't change but the shape did- a physical change.

We broke pretzels to show physical change then...

crushed them and added milk to make a paste.  Since we mixed two or more substances to make a new substance, it was a chemical change.  We also examined burnt matches as an example of a chemical change. 

Floating Marshmallows and Paper Test

We used our knowledge of density to try making marshmallows sink in water instead of floating.

This student took two tries to get one to sink. 

The students tried different things: breaking the marshmallow apart, flattening it, and squishing it into a small ball. 

Today our other quest was to find out which foods had the most fat in them.  Each child selected a food and then mashed it between two sheets of paper.

The foods that turned the paper translucent had the most fat in them.  This is the butter test. 

We were not surprised that peanut butter had a lot of fat. 

Most of the students predicted that the sugar had a lot of fat but the paper test showed us that it didn't.

We also had time to listen to an article about edible insects.  Even after learning that more than 2 billion people in the world eat insects on a regular basis, most said that they would not try them.  Google edible insects to view some interesting snack ideas. :-)

Floating Marshmallows and Paper Test

We used our knowledge of density to try making marshmallows sink in water instead of floating.

This student took two tries to get one to sink. 

The students tried different things: breaking the marshmallow apart, flattening it, and squishing it into a small ball. 

Today our other quest was to find out which foods had the most fat in them.  Each child selected a food and then mashed it between two sheets of paper.

The foods that turned the paper translucent had the most fat in them.  This is the butter test. 

We were not surprised that peanut butter had a lot of fat. 

Most of the students predicted that the sugar had a lot of fat but the paper test showed us that it didn't.

We also had time to listen to an article about edible insects.  Even after learning that more than 2 billion people in the world eat insects on a regular basis, most said that they would not try them.  Google edible insects to view some interesting snack ideas. :-)

Today we learned what dehydrating means and why it was used to preserve food in the past.

We used a crank apple corer/slicer to prepare apples for dehydration. 

The apples were spread on a tray on the food dehydrator. 

It takes about 15 hours until the fruit is ready to eat so I had strawberries, apples, and banana chips that I had already dried for the students to try.  We compared the fresh apples to the dried ones and about half of the group preferred the dried apples.

I also purchased some dried vegetables but they were not a big hit. :-)

We had some time leftover so each child chose a Lego challenge card and used Legos to complete the challenge.