The First Day Dive

Wow, what a wonderful day!  It all started with a beautiful half hour drive to school.  The fog laid over the fields with sun breaking it up into patches.  The mountains screamed God's glory and I couldn't help but think "this is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it."  And what a day to rejoice.
Our class is filled with 26 wonderful students!  There are a booming 19 students in grade five, and 7 in grade four, all of which are unique and willing to contribute to our atmosphere of learning!
We played a number of get to know you games, and completed a writing activity that gave me some idea about students' interests.  A lovely all-school chapel started out our afternoon in time of welcome and worship.  I got to play piano (!), something I'm happy to do in my spare time, let alone at my job!  The school gym echoes like nothing else, so when there are 100 students belting out "Great is Thy Faithfulness" its no wonder you have shivers down your spine.

The Dive of the Day today was by far our science experiment.  In the classroom, we have 2 lava lamps.  The students were enthralled by the blurbing (no, blurbing is not a word, but I thought it was realistic in describing what they looked like) bubbles throughout the day.  So when I told them the science experiment was going to be us making a lava lamp their attention was 100% focused.  I had numerous kids ask for the "procedure" so I thought I would post it here so parents could read it and choose whether or not they would be up for the "challenge."  It was a hit, with both girls and guys and grades!

Make Your Own Lava Lamp

Materials:
An empty bottle
Water
Vegetable Oil
Food Colouring
Alka Seltzer


1.  Fill 1/4 of the empty bottle with water.

2.  Fill the rest of the bottle with oil (before doing this, the students predicted what they thought would happen)

3.  Record what took place (stayed separate, talk about density)

4.  Add the food colouring (before doing this, predict what will happen)

5.  Break the Alka Seltzer into 4, and place the pieces in one after another.

The Alka Seltzer foams in the water and makes the water rise in bubbles to the top of the bottle.

Apparently, if the bottle is capped, you can let it sit for a couple of days and then add more alka seltzer later and it will still work.

Super cool experiment!  The kids loved it (can I say this enough?) and we tried numerous things afterwards.  (What would happen when we shook it, what happens if we put other liquids into it, what happens if we would freeze it...etc.)

We'll see if I can get some pictures and add them to this post soon!

Here's to a fabulous year of learning and exploring to come!