Honestly, I’m not sure if I did my Eganized lesson “correctly.” I’m trying to learn more about his model in my freetime, but I’m no expert in this. What I do know is that I used my imagination, I asked the kids to use theirs, and we all had a good time. The tools that I tried to use from Egan’s framework were storytelling, role-playing, emotional engagement, extremes, humor (because honestly, it was a little ridiculous), vivid imagery, riddles, the binary of life/death, and the heroic quality of saving the world from a super-villain. The kids that I gave my lesson to were a homeschool group between the ages of about 6 and 14. I did go through it a little fast and the lesson lasted about 20-ish minutes.

Initially, I was having trouble figuring out how to Eganize the lesson. The first step in creating a lesson using Egan’s framework is to figure out what’s wonderful about it. That part didn’t seem too hard, because photosynthesis is literally the reason why life on Earth exists. Without it, there wouldn’t be plants and the food chain would collapse fairly rapidly. We oxygen-dependent creatures eventually wouldn’t be able to breathe. But what do you do with that? I was stuck. Then, Brandon from Science is WEIRD suggested that I be a super villain with a photosynthesis off button. At 5’2″, I’m not physically very threatening and I smile constantly, so I didn’t think anyone would buy it, but that gave me the idea to pretend like we were trying together to defeat a supervillain with a photosynthesis off button.

I played around with AI and got it to make me a Photosynthesis Off button that turned out surprisingly well. I gathered clue images using both a royalty free website and AI when I couldn’t find what I wanted. I got the idea to make an official looking letter asking us to solve the case that I could pass around. The morning of the lesson, I had the idea to put everything in a manila envelope labeled TOP SECRET. Even my teenager got pretty into it. As we were driving to the lesson, he changed my ring tone to something that sounded very Mission-Impossible-ish and we worked out a code phrase for him to call me at a specific moment at the beginning of the lesson to get the ball rolling.

Overall, I think it went really well. There were around 15 to 20 kids and even the older ones were clearly amused. The feedback I received from my induction mentor was that all the kids seemed very engaged and nearly all of them actually spoke or contributed in some way. It probably helps that these were all homeschool kids that I know to some degree, so they were more or less willing to go along with my nonsense, but I think it’s fair to say we all had a good time and nearly everyone hopefully learned something.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: 20 to 30 minutes, plus extra if you want to start a leaf collection
Difficulty: easy, but requires an adult to lead the child or group of children
Cost: Free printable

Materials

• paper or device with screen
• manila envelope (optional)
• cup of water (optional)
• leaf (optional)
• flashlight (optional)

Free Printable

Photosynthesis Lesson – Complete Packet with Instructions

Photosynthesis Lesson – Just the Printables

Instructions

1. PART 1: SET THE SCENE – Print the printables packet or load it up on a tablet or other device if you are using technology to share the clues. If you are printing it out, consider putting all the paper in a manila envelope and writing TOP SECRET on the outside. As you are getting your lesson started and talking to the kids casually, pretend to receive communication from a secret agency. You can either have someone in the audience call your phone and pretend to answer it, or have someone deliver your Top Secret envelope to you, or pretend to receive an important transmission on your device. See the instructions packet for an actual script you can use to introduce the evil Dr. Shrubslayer and the Photosynthesis Off button.
   
   
   
   
   
2. PART 2: PHOTOSYNTHESIS – The next step is to get kids to understand a bit about the chemical reaction that IS photosynthesis. What are the inputs? What are the outputs? Try to think of this as a dialogue. See what the kids already know. Ask them to think about what plants need to grow. If they need help, you can show them the clues. Even if they don’t need help, you can still show them the clues to make more of a visual impact. Photosynthesis needs sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide (what we humans breathe out).
   
   
   
   The outputs are oxygen (that’s an oxygen tank on the scuba diver) and glucose (a type of sugar).
   
   
   
   If you would like to help kids remember this reaction, ask for 3 volunteers, one to be water, one to be light, and one to be carbon dioxide. One child will hold a cup of water and you can stick a leaf in it. Next have another kid shine a flashlight on the leaf, and have the third kid blow on it. Ask everyone to imagine the oxygen coming out of the plant and take deep breathes to breathe it in. Ask them to also imagine it growing very slowly as it uses up the sugar to get bigger.
   
3. PART 3: IMPACTS OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS – Now that they know what photosynthesis is, the students have to decide if they want to help capture Dr. Shrubslayer and stop him from using his Photosynthesis Off machine. (We’re busy people. We can’t stop EVERY super villain that comes to town.) In order to decide whether we want to go to the trouble of helping, we need to know why photosynthesis is important. Again, have a conversation and see what the kids already know. Ask them to think about the inputs and outputs of photosynthesis that we just discovered and what could happen if that reaction was not taking place. Show the visual clues as needed to either prompt an answer or highlight an answer given. The answer are that if there was no photosynthesis, we would all be hungry (talk about how even carnivores rely on plants), the land would be barren, and we would all struggle to breathe.
   
   
   
4. PART 4: CHLOROPHYLL – Hopefully at the end of the last section, the kids will decide YES, it’s important that we thwart the evil plan to end photosynthesis. Now introduce the next part of the role-playing game. Say that a secret code word is required to break into his facility and destroy his device. Thankfully, we have a riddle to help us figure out what the code word is. Again, refer to the Instruction Packet for a suggested script. Present this riddle:
   
   
   
   Use the riddle as a starting point for discussion. Have the kids decipher what the riddle means, line by line. What sort of word are we looking for? Once they figure out that it is a chemical that makes plants green in summer, but goes away in fall, see if anyone knows the word. Whether they do or don’t, show them the visual clues to help them remember the word: a pool for CHLOR, a donut for O, and candy filling for FILL. Chlor-O-Fill –> Chlorophyll
   
   
   
   Once they figure out the secret word, pretend to call it in and act like they have saved the world. They have kept the planet green and alive instead of barren and dead!
   
   
   
5. PART 5: LEAF COLLECTION (optional) – Since the group I did the lesson for was an outdoor nature group (Wild + Free), I wanted to give them something hands-on to do that involved nature. I brought little sheets of paper and crayons and challenged the kids to make leaf rubbings of as many different types of leaves as possible. The younger kids tried it, but at this point the preteens and teens mostly wandered away to socialize, which was fine too.

I hope you have fun learning a bit about photosynthsis in this unconventional way! If you try it out, let me know how it goes!

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The reason why I wanted to include Pluto was that I also wanted to read my co-op class this hilarious book told from the point of view of the demoted planet. (My full review of Pluto Gets the Call is here.) As I read the book in class, I passed around the laminated planets for the kids to compare. This let them experience firsthand how much smaller Pluto is than all the others.

Even more impressive than the relative size of the planets to each other is their relative size compared to the Sun. My younger kids and I spent about 30 minutes measuring and painting a Sun a few days before class. In the co-op, I had the students guess how big they thought the Sun would be with their arms before I unveiled our creation for dramatic effect. When I originally did this Sun activity, I just accepted the fact that the whole Sun was not going to fit on my butcher paper. This time around, I wanted to make a big impact, so I used two pieces of butcher paper side by side to fit the whole thing. The results were pretty impressive.

Laying the planets, especially Pluto, on top of the Sun shows how incredibly small all of the planets are compared to our favorite star. Pluto may be the only dwarf planet in the group, but all of the planets are dwarfed by this monstrosity.

Relative Size of Pluto Details

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: about an hour altogether to laminate all the planets and measure and paint the Sun
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable planets. Butcher paper and paint for the Sun require a couple dollars in used supplies. Might be a bigger investment if you don’t already have butcher paper and paint lying around.

Materials

• Free printable major planets
• Free printable Pluto
• Butcher paper
• Yellow paint (we also added a little red paint to add some fun variation)
• Laminating sheets

Supplies

• laminator
• scissors
• paintbrushes
• Optional: Pluto Gets the Call (this book complements the activity so well!)

Instructions

1. First, print out all of the major planets and Pluto.
2. Cut out the planets and labels, then laminate them and cut out the laminated pieces.
   
3. Follow the instructions on this post to make a Sun on the same scale. The radius should be 33″.
   

Have fun getting a sense of the scale of our solar system!

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He spent about 30 minutes working on it by himself using copper pennies and nails, but was still having some trouble. Seeing him working so hard, I got involved and decided to document the process. Hopefully, you can use what we learned to ensure success when you attempt this experiment with your own kids!

How Does It Work

I was actually surprised by how hard it was to figure out exactly how a lemon battery worked! There is a lot of conflicting and inaccurate information on the internet, but I found this document from the American Chemical Society to be the most helpful. It is easy to understand, detailed, and backed up by several other reputable sources.

The main information that I would want my child to know is that there are two sides to a battery. One side is called the cathode and that is the side that pulls electrons from the wire. The other side is the anode and that is the side that gives electrons to the wire. In my son’s Science is Weird class, the teacher used the metaphor of two women, Annie and Cathy, who were a giver and a taker. Annie would give you a kidney if you needed one. Cathy would take your kidney even if she already had two good ones. It would be really handy to remember if the cathode (the mean taker) was the negative side of the battery and the anode (the happy giver) was the positive side, but alas the opposite is true. For older children, if they remember Annie and Cathy, they can just remember that electrons, which are negatively charged, flow toward the positive side, so the cathode is positive.

Next, I would want them to know how these two sides of the battery can be used to power a device. First, they need to understand that electrons, which are negatively charged particles, will flow from the negative side to the positive side. This makes sense because the anode is giving electrons and the cathode is taking them. Because the electrons are flowing through the wire, electricity, which is essentially just moving electrons, is being produced. This electricity can be used to power a low-power device such as a small LED, a hand calculator, or a kitchen timer.

If you wanted to explain this even a step further, you could ask the question WHY is the anode the giver and the cathode the taker? This is due to the chemistry that happens inside the electrolyte, the electrically conductive substance that transports ions near the anode and the cathode. In our case, the electrolyte is lemon juice. The chemistry that is happening at the anode is that the lemon juice is dissolving the zinc off of the nail, which releases positively charged zinc ions into the juice and frees up electrons to travel through the wire. The chemistry that is happening at the cathode is that the electrons being collected from the wire are combined with positively charged hydrogen ions that the copper is pulling from the lemon juice. We didn’t see it, but this reaction produces hydrogen gas causing bubbles within the lemon juice. The anode is giving zinc ions to the electrolyte and giving electrons to the wire. The cathode is taking hydrogen ions from the electrolyte and taking electrons from the wire.

Troubleshooting Tips

My son read online that each lemon battery should produce about 0.7 Volts, so he calculated that he would need 3 lemons to produce the 2 V required for his LED. However, we found that when he was using pennies, the voltage they produced was inconsistent. I theorized that maybe since modern pennies are only coated in copper and not copper all the way through, imperfections in the surface such as nicks and scratches might be interfering with his results. To fix this we went to the hardware store and got 1 foot of copper wire. I believe it was gauge 8 AWG, but the thickness is not super important. The store was kind enough to strip off the plastic insulation for us and cut it into 4 pieces, though we could have done that at home using an exact-o knife and wire cutters. They also ended up giving it to us for free. These 4 pieces of copper were used as our cathodes, the positive end of our batteries that collects the electrons.

If I were to go back and do this experiment again, I probably would have cut a couple more pieces of copper wire giving us 5 or 6 cathodes instead of just 4. This would have allowed us to add more lemons to our battery circuit, which would have produced more voltage and would have caused our LED to light up even brighter than it did. As it was, with 4 batteries, it lit up, but it did not achieve full brightness.

Another suggestion if your battery is not working is to make sure that you roll the lemons to break up the little pouches of lemon juice inside it. The more juice is freed, the better able the lemon will be to dissolve the zinc off of the nail, freeing up more electrons. We used the galvanized nails we happened to have on hand, but bigger nails might produce a bigger voltage because they would have a larger surface area to dissolve zinc. This would allow our anode, the negative end of our battery, to provide even more electrons to the cathode.

Simple Lemon Battery Details

Recommended Age Range: Elementary
Time Required: about 15 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $7 in used supplies

Materials

• lemons (We used 4, but I recommend having 5 or 6 on hand.)
• galvanized nails (You need as many nails as you have lemons. We used 1.5″ nails we had on hand, but any outdoor nails will work. Bigger nails might actually work better.)
• copper wire (You need as many pieces as you have lemons, we used about 2.5″ pieces, but the length is not important. Again, I recommend having at least 5 or 6.)

Supplies

• alligator clips (you need one more alligator clip than the number of lemons)
• an led (or something to power…any device you have, such as a simple calculator or timer, that uses one AA or AAA battery will work)
• a voltmeter (optional, but it will let you measure how much voltage each lemon battery and the entire circuit is producing.)

Instructions

1. First, roll all of your lemons on the counter underneath your palm to free up the juice inside. The juice acts as the electrolyte that conducts electricity through the lemon.
2. Stick your copper piece (your cathode) and your galvanized nail (your anode) into a lemon on opposite sides. They should not be touching each other inside the lemon. To light up an LED, repeat this for 4 lemons.
   
3. Line up your lemons and connect the nail of one lemon to the copper piece of the next lemon using alligator clips.
   
4. Attach leads to the two end terminals. One lead should come off of the last piece of copper wire and one piece should come off of the nail on the other end. This open circuit is equivalent to a battery. It is ready to be hooked up to a device to power it.
   
5. Connect your LED! Of your mini calculator or kitchen timer or other device that requires just a little power. If it doesn’t work, try flipping the LED since they are designed to only work when the current flows in one direction. The shorter end should end up needing to be connected to the nail.
   
6. We did not do this step, but try adding an extra lemon into your circuit! Your light should shine even brighter! Also, if you got a kit of LEDs, try using different colors. Oddly, even though green LEDs were supposed to require more voltage, they lit up the brightest for us.
   
7. Optionally, if you have a voltmeter, try playing around with it and measuring the voltage between different points in your circuit. To get a reading, it needs to be set to the lowest number on the DC V setting. For our voltmeter that was 5, which means that full scale (if the needle moved all the way to the right) is 5 V. If your voltmeter does not seem to be measuring anything, try flipping the leads as it will only show positive voltage drops.
   

Have fun being an electrical engineer!

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In the past, I’ve done acid/base experiments with my kids using a turmeric solution as the color-changing indicator. (This invisible ink experiment using turmeric is particularly fun!) The problem with turmeric is that the color change for bases is much more impressive than for acids. Red cabbage juice is really cool, because the color change is dramatic in both directions. The purple solution changes to bright pink or red for bases and green or blue for acids.

If you are looking for a good reference book to teach elementary-aged kids about acids and bases, I recommend Matter Matters! by Tom Adams and Thomas Flintham. It is full of lots of fun chemistry pop-ups and interactive flaps. Though not a long book, it covers topic such as atoms and molecules, states of matter, chemical reactions, and radioactivity in a way that is fun and engaging for young kids. It has a double page spread just on acids and bases.

If you are feeling like boiling cabbage is too much work for you (and I hear you), you can always just buy a jar of red cabbage. It will just cost a little more money and you will have less indicator to start with.

I also explain in this post the very simple process of making indicator strips from the red cabbage indicator solution. This just allows the child to dip the color-changing paper into the test solution to test for acidity. It is an easy extension to this experiment, but honestly, I think most kids will have more fun stirring the test substances into the indicator solution. If the indicator paper seems too intimidating or time-consuming, just skip those steps!

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: About 10 minutes of prep, with 2 hours of letting the solution cool to prepare indicator solution. If making the indicator paper, that will take an addition couple hours of drying time.
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $2 in used supplies

Materials:

• head of red cabbage
• 4-6 cups distilled water
• 2 to 10 coffee filters (optional, only if making indicator strips)

Supplies:

• knife
• cutting board
• a large pot
• measuring glass
• spoon for stirring (not pictured)
• jar with lid for storing leftover solution
• funnel for pouring in jar
• strainer (not pictured, because my pot lid contains strainer holes)
• scissors (optional, only if making indicator strips)
• cookie sheet or drying rack (optional, only if making indicator strips)

Test Substances:

In addition to the materials and supplies needed to make the acid base indicator and test strips, you will also want to look around your house to find substances you can check for acidity. These can be anything! Grape juice, coca cola, olive oil, sand…let your kids be creative. Below are the substances we tested. Whatever you decide, make sure you test baking soda and vinegar! If you don’t have those, soap and lemon juice are great too.

• soap
• baking powder
• borax
• lemon
• orange
• baking soda
• water
• vinegar

Instructions:

1. Measure 4 to 6 cups of distilled water. We used 6 cups so we would be sure to have some solution left over for a different day.
   
2. Pour the water in a pot and bring it to a boil.
   
3. Meanwhile, chop up your head of cabbage into chunks. You want your pieces to be bigger than whatever you will use to strain the solution.
   
4. When the water is boiling, place the cabbage in the pot and turn off the heat.
   
5. Stir.
   
6. Wait for the solution to cool, stirring occasionally. For us, this took a couple hours.
   
7. While the solution is cooling, get your coffee filter paper ready. If needed, cut it into pieces that will lay flat and are smaller than your pot. Each filter will makes several indicator strips. We used about 10 filters, but we have lots left over to save.
   
8. When the solution is cool, place the filter paper in the red cabbage juice solution and make sure it is saturated.
   
9. Lay the filter paper on a cookie sheet or other suitable place to dry.
   
10. Strain the red cabbage indicator solution into either test containers (like cups) or into a jar to save for later, or both.
    
11. Label the leftover indicator solution so you remember what it is and store it in your fridge.
    
12. After the filter paper dries, cut it into strips. This may take a couple hours. I assisted the process with a blow dryer.
    

Now you are ready to let your kids experiment! How you want to conduct this experiment is entirely up to you. Since I have 4 kids, I gave them each 2 cups with cabbage juice indicator and as many test strips as they wanted. I let them each pick 2 test substances (one for each of their cups). They took turns guessing what color the solution would change before the poured their substances in. Red/pink means that the substance was an acid and blue or green means it was a base.

By the end, my kids were pretty good at guessing which substances were acids (like vinegar and citrus fruits), which were bases (like baking soda and soap), and which were neutral (like water). In the beginning, my 10 year old son guessed that soap was an acid, since it burns if it gets in your eyes. However, he questioned his guess, since soap does not sting in cuts like lemon juice.

After we used the indicator solution I put some more test substances (lemon juice, vinegar, baking soda stirred into warm water, etc.) in separate containers. Then they shared the substances and dipped their strips in whichever container they wanted. My daughter discovered it was fun to use a q-tip to draw on indicator paper. She was especially excited to discover she could change the indicator paper from blue to pink back to blue.

However your kids decide to play with the indicator solution and indicator paper, I hope they have fun. It’s experiments like these that make my kids say, “I love science.” At this age, that is the absolute ultimate goal when I do activities like this with my kids.

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My kids learned that even though spinach leaves are green, there are actually many different colored molecules within spinach. Chromatography is a process that separates out the different molecules within a substance.

Chlorophyll is the chemical that makes leaves green, but there are other color molecules within leaves as well, such as red, orange, brown, and yellow. Normally, the green chlorophyll dominates the other colors making leaves appear green. In the fall, when it gets cold, some plants stop producing as much chlorophyll allowing their other colors to show instead.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: 10 minutes of prep, at least 30 minutes to see results
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $2 in used supplies

Materials:

• isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol)
• spinach leaves
• coffee filter
• mason jar (we used a 16 ounce jar)
• mason jar lid
• fork (or spoon)
• scissors
• tape (any kind)

Instructions:

1. Rip up some spinach into small pieces and put them into a jar.

2. Fill up the jar until it is about 1/3 full.

3. Pour isopropyl alcohol into jar just until the spinach is covered.

4. Stir the spinach and alcohol together.

5. Place the lid on the jar and shake it up. Let is sit for an hour shaking it occasionally.

6. Cut out a strip of coffee filter paper.

7. Tape the filter paper to the edge of the mason jar such that the end of the paper dips into the spinach “juice.”

8. Check the paper periodically and you should see the colors begin to separate!

This is what the filter paper looked like a couple hours later…

And a couple hours after that…

And the next day…

Remember to remind the children that spinach is green because of all the green chlorophyll molecules inside it, but it contains other color molecules as well.

Have fun with your young chemists!

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This experiment was inspired by our astronomy curriculum from Pandia Press (NOT an affiliate link, but a great curriculum). The primary change that we made between the instructions in that curriculum and our final version was to use a Kleenex instead of a paper towel. Also, as we were inserting the baking soda-filled tissue into the bottle, we ripped off the end of the tissue as described below to cause the mixing to occur more quickly.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: 5 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $3 in used supplies

Materials:

• 2 liter bottle
• baking soda
• vinegar
• #4 rubber stopper
• measuring cup
• tablespoon
• 3 pencils
• packing or duct tape
• Kleenex or other tissue
• funnel (not pictured)

Instructions:

1. Place rubber stopper into empty 2-liter bottle.

2. Put a piece of packing or duct tape near end of unsharpened pencil opposite eraser.

3. Stand 2-liter bottle on rubber stopper and tape pencil to bottle so that it touches the ground.

4. Repeat previous steps by taping a second pencil to 2-liter bottle.

5. Repeat previous steps again to tape a third pencil to bottle. Adjust pencils if necessary to make sure all 3 erasers are touching the ground and bottle is more or less vertical.

6. Measure 2 cups of vinegar.

7. Use a funnel to pour 2 cups of vinegar into bottle.

8. Use a measuring spoon to place 2 tablespoons of baking soda onto a facial tissue.

9. Fold tissue in half to get baking soda to gather along the center crease.

10. Fold bottom of tissue paper up as shown to hold in baking soda.

11. Fold side of tissue over as shown.

12. Roll up the tissue as shown into a tube that will fit into the opening of the 2-liter bottle.
The final packet should look something like this.
13. Start inserting the baking soda packet into the opening of the 2-liter bottle.

14. Continue pushing tissue packet into bottle being careful not to let it fall in.

15. When packet is almost completely into the bottle and the remaining part outside the bottle contains no baking soda, use the stopper to hold the packet in place. Rip off the remaining tissue that does not contain baking soda and let the packet fall into the bottle.

16. Give the bottle a quick shake and turn it over so that stopper is at the ground.
17. Wait patiently. This never took more than 60 seconds for us.
18. Watch the rocket launch!
And continue to rise…. After perfecting our baking soda packet and insertion method, every launch went higher than our roof!

Have fun being a rocket scientist!



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]]> https://researchparent.com/super-easy-bottle-rocket/feed/ 0 https://researchparent.com/plant-and-animal-cell-comparison-activity/ https://researchparent.com/plant-and-animal-cell-comparison-activity/#respond Sun, 21 Oct 2018 03:50:37 +0000 https://researchparent.com/?p=16012 If you happen to have already made a plant cell model and an animal cell model, comparing these two different types of cells is a natural extension activity. I actually recommend making these cell models simultaneously as they have almost the same list of ingredients. Thankfully, doubling the number of cell models does not double...

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The post Plant and Animal Cell Comparison Activity appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

]]> If you happen to have already made a plant cell model and an animal cell model, comparing these two different types of cells is a natural extension activity. I actually recommend making these cell models simultaneously as they have almost the same list of ingredients. Thankfully, doubling the number of cell models does not double the time!



Creating these two different cell models is a great place to begin a conversation to notice the differences. Some are very straightforward, like organelles that are in one cell and not the other. For example, the plant cell has green grapes (i.e. chloroplasts) and the animal cell does not. Also, the plant cell has one large water balloon (i.e. vacuole) and the animal balloon has a few small ones.

Other differences are not as obvious. For example, the animal cell uses a round bowl and the plant cell uses a square dish. This is because plant cells tend to be rectangular and animal cells do not. However, if we could have done this demonstration perfectly, we would have pulled the animal cell out of its round bowl after it solidified. (I tried this when my cell was starting to melt a little bit and was unhappy with the result, so I don’t recommend it. It might have worked better if I had done it right after I pulled it out of the fridge.) This is a distinction you will have to explain to your child verbally, maybe just pulling the model out for a few seconds. You can point out that the plant cell has a cell wall label on the glass container and the animal cell does not. You can explain to the kids that animal cells do not have cell walls. It is the cell wall that gives plant cells their rigid rectangular structure.



If you choose to use my plant and animal cell models, it is important to point out while comparing them that the cytosol is actually clear. I used one drop of food coloring in each of my cells to make it easier to tell them apart. I used green for the plant cell since plants usually appear green. However, in reality, cytosol is actually colorless. To be more realistic, we could have left the gelatin clear. You can use this discussion as an opportunity to explain to kids that it is the chloroplasts that give plants their green color.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~30 min (plus the time needed to make the plant and animal cells)
Difficulty: Easy — though making the cell models can be time-consuming and requires space in your fridge.
Cost: Free printable. Under $10 in used supplies. I used primarily things we already had in the pantry and fridge, but I did end up buying a small carton of blueberries and a box of gelatin. I recommend switching out items if necessary to avoid buying things if your family won’t enjoy the leftovers.



Materials:

• plant cell model
• animal cell model

Instructions:

1. If you don’t already have plant and animal cell models, please feel free to follow the tutorials for my plant cell model and animal cell model.
2. Have the students examine the two cells and try to determine the differences.
3. Discuss with them the differences they see.

Here are some of the differences they may detect on their own or with your assistance.

• The plant cell has green grapes and the animal cell does not. This is because plant cells have chloroplasts, organelles that contain chlorophyll and convert sunlight into energy in a process known as photosynthesis.
• The animal cell has 2 bundles of spaghetti noodles and the plant cell does not. This is because animal cells have centrioles, while most plant cells do not. Centrioles are used for cell division during an animal cell’s reproduction cycle. Plant cells are able to reproduce without centrioles.
• The animal cell has a few small balloons and the plant cell has one large one. This is because, by the time they are done growing, plant cells typically only have one large vacuole that typically takes up more than half the volume of the cell. Animal cells in contrast may have one or more vacuoles, but they are much smaller in size. Vacuoles are used to store water and food. They also help maintain the pressure within the cell.
• The plant cell has a cell wall label and the animal cell does not. This is because plant cells have cell walls which give plants a rigid structure that allows them to grow upward and outward toward sunlight. Animal cells do not have cell walls. (Note: It would be more realistic if we took away the bowl from the animal cell, but this might be difficult. You could try freezing the animal cell if you wanted to be sure it would maintain its shape.)
• The plant cell is square while the animal cell is round. The reason for this is related to the previous observation. Animal cells only have a cell membrane and not a cell wall, so they are typically round in shape. Plant cells have a rigid cell wall, which causes plant cells to typically have more distinct edges and a rectangular shape.



Enjoy your study of plant and animal cells!

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The post Plant and Animal Cell Comparison Activity appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

]]> https://researchparent.com/plant-and-animal-cell-comparison-activity/feed/ 0 https://researchparent.com/plant-cell-model/ https://researchparent.com/plant-cell-model/#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2018 05:11:16 +0000 https://researchparent.com/?p=15965 A few weeks ago I published a post on how my family made an animal cell model. We actually made a plant cell model the same day. Plant and animal cells are very similar. There are a few key differences, however. I’m planning to do a post soon explaining how you can use these models...

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The post Plant Cell Model appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

]]> A few weeks ago I published a post on how my family made an animal cell model. We actually made a plant cell model the same day. Plant and animal cells are very similar. There are a few key differences, however. I’m planning to do a post soon explaining how you can use these models to explain these differences. The primary difference is that plant cells have an extra type of organelle called chloroplasts (the green grapes in my model). This gives plants their green color and also allows them to undergo the process of photosynthesis.



My 8 year old and I both got pretty confused when we were studying plant cells. With animals, whether or not something is alive or dead is pretty well defined. With plants, however, it is less clear. For example, my son asked if a potato in our pantry was alive or dead. What about potato chips? The inspiration for his difficult questions were this episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy.

I actually didn’t know. I’m still not 100% sure. A plant that is growing in the ground is definitely alive and has living cells. I’m also pretty darn positive that potato chips are not alive and do not have living cells. I *think* a potato in my pantry actually is still alive in some way. They occasionally sprout if I leave them too long. If I planted them in the ground, they would grow. So my best guess, is yes, potatoes in the pantry are alive or at least have some living cells.

Then he started asking me even more confusing questions like, what happens to dead cells? Do they disappear or do all the organelles just stay there, but stop doing things? My response, “Great questions, buddy. I have no idea.” Maybe one day I’ll understand the intricacies of cell biology. Maybe he’ll go to college and study biology. For now, I’m just glad my kids are asking questions. Curiosity is the most important part of learning, in my opinion.

As I mentioned in my animal cell post, you do not need to use the same food items that I used in my cell. I wanted my model to look more or less like the picture of a cell in my high school level biology book, but if you need to switch something out for something else, your kids really aren’t losing much. For your reference, this is what I used:

• cytosol – gelatin
• nucleus – tangerine
• nuclear envelope – tangerine peel
• nucleolus – blueberry
• chloroplasts – green grapes
• Golgi apparatus – folded lasagna noodles
• ribosomes – pearl couscous
• smooth endoplasmic reticulum – manicotti glued together
• rough endoplasmic reticulum – manicotti glued together with pearl couscous
• lysosomes – peas
• mitochondria – red beans
• vacuole – water balloons
• cytoskeleton – spaghetti and angel hair pasta
• cell membrane – plastic wrap
• cell wall – square baking dish

If you decide to follow the detailed, step-by-step directions in the tutorial below, you can use this list as an answer key to go along with these free, printable plant cell toothpick labels. Kids can either use these labels to test their own memory or they can play a multiplayer game.

Since I have 4 kids of very different ages, we played by putting all the flags in a small container. Then the kids took turns closing their eyes and picking out a flag at random.



Then, based on whichever flag they picked (and their age), I would give them clues to know where to put the flag. “This organelle is only found in plant cells, not animal cells. It helps with photosynthesis and gives plants their green color. It’s bigger than the peas, which are the lysosomes….the grapes, right!”



Because our toddler wants to be involved in everything the big kids do, he was allowed to put the flags wherever he wanted. Our only goal was to keep him from popping the water balloon!



Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~2 hours (about half of this time is waiting for the gelatin to start to solidify)
Difficulty: Easy — but you do need to check frequently when the gelatin is getting firm to make sure it doesn’t completely solidify before you add your organelles
Cost: Free printable. Under $10 in used supplies. I used primarily things we already had in the pantry and fridge, but I did end up buying a small carton of blueberries and a box of gelatin. I recommend switching out items if necessary to avoid buying things if your family won’t enjoy whatever isn’t used.



Materials:

• paper for printing flag labels
• 13 toothpicks (the cell membrane and cell wall labels will just be taped or glued to the plastic wrap and glass dish)
• gelatin (I used a box of Knox gelatin from the grocery store that only came with 4 envelopes. We used all 4 envelopes.)
• one tangerine
• one blueberry
• about 10 peas (I used frozen)
• about 7 green grapes
• 3 spaghetti noodles
• 3 angel hair pasta noodles (optional, could just use more spaghetti)
• about 10 beans (I used red beans, but any kind is fine)
• 2 manicotti noodles
• one lasagna noodle sheet (I used the flat, oven-ready kind, but the bumpy kind should work too)
• handful of pearl couscous
• 1 water balloon
• plastic wrap
• one drop of food coloring (I used green, but the cytosol doesn’t really have a color, so it doesn’t matter)

Supplies:

• square (or rectangular) baking dish that will hold at least 6 cups of liquid. I used a 9″ x 9″ dish. (You will only be adding 4 cups of liquid, but you also need room to add all the “organelles.”)
• measuring glass
• pot for heating water
• spoon
• glue (I used Elmer’s, but other types would likely work)

Instructions:

1. First, cook the 2 manicotti noodles and the lasagna noodle so they are soft by boiling them in water for a few minutes.
2. Use glue to fold and secure the lasagna noodle as shown. Wait a couple minutes for the glue to dry.




3. Cut the folded lasagna noodle in half.



4. Apply glue to the larger flat sides of each half.



5. Glue the two halves together. You now have a Golgi apparatus (which are also sometimes called Golgi bodies.)
   
6. Measure 3 cups of water.



7. Start boiling the 3 cups of water. You can continue assembling other “organelles” while you wait for the water to boil.



8. Cut a cooked manicotti noodle into 3 pieces.



9. Apply glue to the inside of all 3 manicotti noodle pieces and the top of two.



10. Stack the manicotti noodles together as shown.



11. Place something heavy on top of the manicotti pieces and wait for it to dry. This is your smooth endoplasmic reticulum.



12. Now we are going to repeat the previous 4 steps again, but this time, add pearl couscous. Start by cutting your second manicotti into 3 pieces.



13. Apply glue to the manicotti pieces as before, but this time stick some pearl couscous on the insides and outsides.



14. Stack them together, as before, adding pearl couscous.



15. Put a toothpick threw the pieces to hold them together. Add more pearl couscous to the outer surfaces with glue.



16. Don’t forget to add pearl couscous to the bottom of the stack of manicotti pieces. You now have your rough endoplasmic reticulum.



17. By this time, your water will probably be boiling. If so, measure 1 cup of water.



18. Add 4 packets of gelatin to water (if using Knox envelopes. It not, check the packaging of your gelatin to figure out how much to add to 4 cups total of water.) Let stand for 1 minute.



19. Stir the gelatin into the water.



20. Add boiling water to the gelatin mixture.



21. Add one drop of food coloring and stir. This is your cytosol. Note that when I was in school, we called this cytoplasm. However, the convention now seems to be that the word cytoplasm includes other structures such as ribosomes (couscous).



22. Use plastic wrap to cover your dish. You will likely need to use two pieces. The square dish is your cell wall. The plastic wrap is your cell membrane.




23. Pour the green “cytosol” into the bowl with the plastic wrap. You will probably want to let this cool off a bit before sticking it in the fridge.



24. While you wait for it to cool off, fill up a water balloon. This will be your vacuole. If you are going to make an animal cell to compare with your plant cell, make sure to fill this plant cell water balloon more than you did for the animal cell. A plant cell usually only contains one larger vacuole instead of a few smaller ones like an animal cell.




25. Cut a tangerine in half.



26. Place a blueberry into the center of the tangerine. The entire tangerine plus blueberry is the nucleus of the cell. The blueberry is the nucleolus and the tangerine peel is the nuclear envelope.



27. Break up some pieces of spaghetti and angel hair pasta into 2 or 3 pieces. This will be your cytoskeleton.



28. If you feel like the level of your “cytosol” is too low. Feel free to add a little more water. I ended up adding another cup of water.



29. Check if your bowl with gelatin mixture is no longer hot. If so, place it in the refrigerator.



30. CHECK THE CLOCK! You will want to pull the gelatin out of the fridge BEFORE it solidifies. You want it to have started getting thicker, so that your organelles will not sink all the way to the bottom, but you also don’t want it to be so solid that you have to break the gelatin to insert your organelles. For me, the ideal time was between 45 and 55 minutes. Around the 30 minute mark, I would start checking every 5 minutes or so. (Note: even if you feel you’ve waited a little too long, I found that having it sit out on the counter for a few minutes while I inserted my food items was long enough for the cracks in the surface to “heal” themselves.
31. While you are waiting for your gelatin to gel, make your toothpick flags. First cut out all the plant cell labels.




32. Set the cell membrane and cell wall labels off to the side. Since you will want to attach these to the plastic wrap and glass dish, you do not need the toothpick. You can either use glue or tape.
33. Apply glue to the back of a label.



34. Fold the two sides together and stick a toothpick in the opening.



35. Secure the label around the toothpick and let it dry.



36. Repeat for the other 12 labels (being sure to exclude the cell membrane and cell wall labels).
37. Once your gelatin has just barely started to gel, pull it out of the fridge. Note that the order of the next several steps is not important.
38. Add your water balloon to your cell. This represents a vacuole.



39. Add your half tangerine with a blueberry in the middle to your cell. This represents the nucleus including both the nuclear envelope (the peel) and the nucleolus (the blueberry).



40. Add the manicotti with attached couscous to the cell near the nucleus. This represents the rough endoplasmic reticulum.



41. Add the manicotti without the couscous farther away from the nucleus. This is the smooth endoplasmic reticulum.



42. Add your folded lasagna noodle to the cell. This is your Golgi apparatus.



43. Add some green grapes to your cell. These will represent chloroplasts.



44. Add beans to you cell to represent mitochondria.



45. Add couscous to your cell. These will be your ribosomes.



46. Add peas to your plant cell. These represent lysosomes.



47. Add spaghetti and angel hair to the cell to represent cytoskeleton.



48. Place back in the fridge for another 30 minutes or so in order for the gelatin to completely solidify.

You now have a completed plant cell model! Now as you learn about each organelle, you can use your flags to label each part of the cell.


Kids can use the flags to test their own knowledge or take turns placing the flags to play a multi-player game.


I hope your kids enjoy this activity demonstrating plant cell biology!



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The post Plant Cell Model appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

]]> https://researchparent.com/plant-cell-model/feed/ 4 https://researchparent.com/animal-cell-model/ https://researchparent.com/animal-cell-model/#comments Sun, 26 Aug 2018 04:24:16 +0000 https://researchparent.com/?p=15888 Cell biology can be hard. Cells are too small to see and the science contains a lot of long, complicated words. How is anyone supposed to remember ANYTHING having to do with cells, when there’s nothing to visualize? I’m hoping this animal cell model activity will solve that problem. (I’ve also made a plant cell...

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The post Animal Cell Model appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

]]> Cell biology can be hard. Cells are too small to see and the science contains a lot of long, complicated words. How is anyone supposed to remember ANYTHING having to do with cells, when there’s nothing to visualize? I’m hoping this animal cell model activity will solve that problem. (I’ve also made a plant cell model which pairs well with this demonstration, so stay tuned!



The first time I made a cell model using food items was over 20 years ago. (Time flies, doesn’t it?!) It was high school Honors Biology and for that rendition of this classic science demonstration, I pretty much used only candy. If it didn’t have a high sugar content, it didn’t go in my model. Jello, Red Hots, gummy worms….I’m pretty sure my primary motivation was eating the leftovers. “I’m not kidding, Mom! I really do need a giant box of jellybeans for school!”

I remember the only problem being that a lot of the dyes in the candy bled into my cytoplasm. This time around, I decided to opt for a more color-stable, healthy assortment of food products. That way if my kids decided to sample the nucleus, they wouldn’t be bouncing off the walls for hours.

Below I will provide a step-by-step, picture tutorial for how I put together our animal cell model. However, there’s no need to use the exact same items that I used. I chose items based roughly on how I thought each organelle (cell component) should look, but let’s be honest…food is never going to exactly replicate the microscopic building blocks of life. If you need to switch out your pearl couscous for rice or your peas for corn…don’t worry about it! Work with what you have.

Here is an outline of what I used for your reference:

• cytosol – gelatin
• nucleus – tangerine
• nuclear envelope – tangerine peel
• nucleolus – blueberry
• Golgi apparatus – folded lasagna noodles
• ribosomes – pearl couscous
• smooth endoplasmic reticulum – manicotti glued together
• rough endoplasmic reticulum – manicotti glued together with pearl couscous
• lisosomes – peas
• mitochondria – red beans
• vacuole – water balloons
• centriole – spaghetti glued together
• cytoskeleton – spaghetti and angel hair pasta
• cell membrane – plastic wrap

Once you’ve assembled your animal cell, feel free to use my free printable labels to make toothpick flags and let your child or student practice putting the flags into the cell. In doing this they can test their own knowledge by checking back with the list above. If you have more than one child (as I do), you can also have them take turns picking a flag at random.



You can turn it into a game by having them score points if they are able to poke the flag into an appropriate spot. However, since my kids vary greatly in age and ability, I just gave them clues to figure out where to put it. “Mitochondria….remember, that’s the powerhouse of the cell. They are pretty small…not round like a ball, but a little stretched out…maybe a little bean-shaped even.” Basically I would just keep talking until I told them exactly where it should go if necessary.



If you are looking for ways to help introduce your child to cells, unfortunately I have not found any books that I’ve been overly impressed with. When I was making my model, I referred to a high school level biology text book I happen to own, but that is definitely not appropriate for my elementary-aged kids. Instead, we watched this FreeSchool video about cells and, going back to my own school days, this episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy. If you know of any great cell resources for kids, please comment below to let me know!

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~2 hours (about half of this time is waiting for the gelatin to start to solidify)
Difficulty: Easy — but you do need to check frequently when the gelatin is getting firm to make sure it doesn’t completely solidify before you add your organelles
Cost: Free printable. Under $10 in used supplies. I used primarily things we already had in the pantry and fridge, but I did end up buying a small carton of blueberries and a box of gelatin. I recommend switching out items if necessary to avoid buying things if your family won’t enjoy whatever isn’t used.



Materials:

• paper for printing flag labels
• 13 toothpicks (the cell membrane label will just be taped or glued to the plastic wrap)
• gelatin (I used a box of Knox gelatin from the grocery store that only came with 4 envelopes. We used all 4 envelopes.)
• one tangerine
• one blueberry
• about 10 peas (I used frozen)
• 5 spaghetti noodles (2 will be used for centrioles and the rest for the cytoskeleton)
• 3 angel hair pasta noodles (optional, could just use more spaghetti)
• about 10 beans (I used red beans, but any kind is fine)
• 2 manicotti noodles
• one lasagna noodle sheet (I used the flat, oven-ready kind, but the bumpy kind should work too)
• handful of pearl couscous
• 2 or 3 water balloons
• plastic wrap
• one drop of food coloring (I used blue, but the cytosol doesn’t really have a color, so it doesn’t matter)

Supplies:

• round glass bowl that will hold at least 6 cups of liquid. (You will only be adding 4 cups of liquid, but you also need room to add all the “organelles.”)
• measuring glass
• pot for heating water
• spoon
• glue (I used Elmer’s, but other types would likely work)

Instructions:

1. First, cook the 2 manicotti noodles and the lasagna noodle so they are soft by boiling them in water for a few minutes.
2. Use glue to fold and secure the lasagna noodle as shown. Wait a couple minutes for the glue to dry.




3. Cut the folded lasagna noodle in half.



4. Apply glue to the larger flat sides of each half.



5. Glue the two halves together. You now have a Golgi apparatus (which are also sometimes called Golgi bodies.)
   
6. Measure 3 cups of water.



7. Start boiling the 3 cups of water. You can continue assembling other “organelles” while you wait for the water to boil.



8. Break 2 spaghetti noodles into about 1 inch pieces.



9. Apply glue to about 5 or 6 pieces side by side.



10. Spread the glue around and push the spaghetti pieces together as shown. This will be a centriole. Make 2 and let dry.



11. Cut a cooked manicotti noodle into 3 pieces.



12. Apply glue to the inside of all 3 manicotti noodle pieces and the top of two.



13. Stack the manicotti noodles together as shown.



14. Place something heavy on top of the manicotti pieces and wait for it to dry. This is your smooth endoplasmic reticulum.



15. Now we are going to repeat the previous 4 steps again, but this time, add pearl couscous. Start by cutting your second manicotti into 3 pieces.



16. Apply glue to the manicotti pieces as before, but this time stick some pearl couscous on the insides and outsides.



17. Stack them together, as before, adding pearl couscous.



18. Put a toothpick threw the pieces to hold them together. Add more pearl couscous to the outer surfaces with glue.



19. Don’t forget to add pearl couscous to the bottom of the stack of manicotti pieces. You now have your rough endoplasmic reticulum.



20. By this time, your water will probably be boiling. If so, measure 1 cup of water.



21. Add 4 packets of gelatin to water (if using Knox envelopes. It not, check the packaging of your gelatin to figure out how much to add to 4 cups total of water.) Let stand for 1 minute.



22. Stir the gelatin into the water.



23. Add boiling water to the gelatin mixture.



24. Add one drop of food coloring and stir. This is your cytosol. Note that when I was in school, we called this cytoplasm. However, the convention now seems to be that the word cytoplasm includes other structures such as ribosomes (couscous).



25. Use plastic wrap to cover your bowl. You will likely need to use two pieces. This is your cell membrane.



26. Pour the blue “cytosol” into the bowl with the plastic wrap. You will probably want to let this cool off a bit before sticking it in the fridge.



27. While you wait for it to cool off, fill up water balloons. These will be your vacuoles. If you are going to make a plant cell to compare with your animal cell, make sure to fill these water balloons for the animal cell less. The animal cell vacuoles are smaller than the one in a plant cell.




28. Cut a tangerine in half.



29. Place a blueberry into the center of the tangerine. The entire tangerine plus blueberry is the nucleus of the cell. The blueberry is the nucleolus and the tangerine peel is the nuclear envelope.



30. Break up some pieces of spaghetti and angel hair pasta into 2 or 3 pieces. This will be your cytoskeleton.



31. Check if your bowl with gelatin mixture is no longer hot. If so, place it in the refrigerator.



32. CHECK THE CLOCK! You will want to pull the gelatin out of the fridge, BEFORE it solidifies. You want it to have started getting thicker, so that your organelles will not sink all the way to the bottom, but you also don’t want it to be so solid that you have to break the gelatin to insert your organelles. For me, the ideal time was between 45 and 55 minutes. Around the 30 minute mark, I would start checking every 5 minutes or so. (Note: even if you feel you’ve waited a little too long, I found that having it sit out on the counter for a few minutes while I inserted my food items was long enough for the cracks in the surface to “heal” themselves.
33. While you are waiting for your gelatin to gel, make your toothpick flags. First cut out all the animal cell labels.




34. Set the cell membrane label off to the side. Since you will want to attach this one to the plastic wrap, you do not need the toothpick. You can either use glue or tape. Also, note that there is no cell wall label. Unlike plant cells, animal cells lack a cell wall. In the plant cell, I called the bowl the cell wall. The animal cell still contains a bowl, but this bowl is there simply to support the shape of our cell, not to act as a cell wall.
35. Apply glue to the back of a label.



36. Fold the two sides together and stick a toothpick in the opening.



37. Secure the label around the toothpick and let it dry.



38. Repeat for the other 12 labels (being sure to exclude the cell membrane label).
39. Once your gelatin has just barely started to gel, pull it out of the fridge. Note that the order of the next several steps is not important.
40. Add peas to the cell. These are the lysosomes.



42. Add 2 to 3 water balloons to cell. These are the vacuoles.



43. Add the tangerine with a blueberry in the middle to the cell. This is your nucleus, nucleolus, and nuclear envelope.



44. Add the manicotti with pearl couscous attached to it near the nucleus. This is your rough endoplasmic reticulum.



45. Add the manicotti without pearl couscous farther away from the nucleus. This is your smooth endoplasmic reticulum.



46. Add folded lasagna to the cell. This is the Golgi apparatus.



47. Add 1 inch spaghetti noodles glued into two clumps to the cell. These are your centrioles. They should be perpendicular to each other.



48. Add beans to cell model. These are the mitochondria.



49. Add pearl couscous to cell model. These represent ribosomes.



50. Add spaghetti and angel hair pasta to cell. This represents your cytoskeleton.



51. Place back in the fridge for another 30 minutes or so in order for the gelatin to completely solidify.

You now have a completed animal cell model! Now as you learn about each organelle, you can use your flags to label each part of the cell.


Kids can use the flags to test their own knowledge or take turns placing the flags to play a multi-player game.


I hope your kids enjoy this activity demonstrating animal cell biology!



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Robotics Activities for Kids

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]]> https://researchparent.com/animal-cell-model/feed/ 7 https://researchparent.com/spotting-the-international-space-station/ https://researchparent.com/spotting-the-international-space-station/#respond Wed, 04 Jul 2018 02:24:45 +0000 https://researchparent.com/?p=15795 I LOVE astronomy. It all started when my mom rented me Space Camp from our local video store about 30 years ago. I became absolutely obsessed with that movie. As a junior in high school, I figured out how to enroll in our local community college so I could take Intro to Astronomy over the...

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The post Spotting the International Space Station appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

]]> I LOVE astronomy. It all started when my mom rented me Space Camp from our local video store about 30 years ago. I became absolutely obsessed with that movie. As a junior in high school, I figured out how to enroll in our local community college so I could take Intro to Astronomy over the summer. That’s why I was SO EXCITED when my 8 year old recently said he wanted to learn more about “planets and stuff.” Last night, my kids and I had such a great time spotting the International Space Station.



Of course, I started our summer of astronomy fun with a family viewing of Space Camp. (Seriously, how is that movie not more popular?) I was instantly transported back to my 8 year old self, aware that the plot was far-fetched, but loving it nonetheless. My own kids were riveted. Personally, I think it is a fantastic family movie (but be aware that there is at least one use of the word “shit” and a reference to big hands that had my husband and I glancing at each other). Thankfully, the “mature” content went over my kids heads. They loved it.

To study space, we’ve also watched some Magic School Bus episodes related to planets and meteors and a couple episodes of Cosmos on Netflix. Each night my kids and I go outside and spend about 10 minutes looking at the sky before bed. We started out observing the moon every day so that we would know if it was waxing or waning. My older 2 kids can now reliably find the Big Dipper, Jupiter, Mars, sometimes the Little Dipper if it’s dark enough, and the stars Polaris, Arcturus, and Vega. We use the app, SkyView Free, to check that we’ve identified correctly. In that app, you can ask it to tell you where the International Space Station (ISS) and other fun things are.

Every night over the past couple weeks, my son has been disappointed that the ISS is never in view. I remembered that once while we were camping several years ago, my husband thought he saw the International Space Station, a bright light arching across the sky. I was skeptical it was actually the space station and not a plane or other satellite. When we got home the next day, I looked it up. He was right. The ISS had been predicted to cross over the sky in our area at about 9:30 pm, the exact time my husband had spotted it.

When my son became fixated on spotting the International Space Station, I knew it was a wish I could make happen. Unfortunately, in the near future all the viewing windows near us were at around 4 in the morning. To my kids, I think the middle-of-the-night aspect made the whole adventure more appealing.

This morning, I woke my 6 and 8 year olds up at 4:15 am and we went outside with blankets and flashlights. The space station was supposed to be visible from 4:23 to 4:26 am. At 4:26 am, I told my kids, “I’m sorry, guys. I guess we missed it. I don’t know what happened. Maybe the moon is too bright tonight or something.”

Just then, my 8 year old yelled, “There it is!!!” He was right. It was about 3 minutes later than I expected, but we were able to watch the bright light traverse across the sky. There is no way we could have missed it. Now that we’ve spent the past couple weeks looking at planes and smaller satellites, I understand how my husband knew it was the ISS on that camping trip all those year ago.

“There are people in there, you know,” I said to my kids. “Really?” asked my 6 year old, skeptically. Yep, it’s mind-blowing for me too, kid. If you’re looking for a resource to learn more about the ISS with your kindergarten or elementary-aged kids, my family enjoyed poring over the 4 page spread on the International Space Station in the Big Book of Rockets and Spacecraft.



Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~15 minutes (unfortunately, this will almost certainly cut into your kids sleeping time)
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free

Supplies:

• A computer to use NASA’s Spot the Station website
• An alarm clock (if you need to wake up early in the morning, though in some places, it might be visible after sunset instead of before sunrise)
• Flashlights (to reduce light pollution, don’t turn on any outdoor lights)
• Jackets (unless you live somewhere that it’s warm at night)
• Shoes (you don’t want to be hunting for them in the middle of the night)
• Blanket (if you’ll be sitting on the ground)
• Compass (optional, but you’ll want to at least have a general idea of the directions)
• Smartphone (optional, we didn’t use one during our viewing, but an app like SkyView Free will tell you exactly where the ISS is)

Instructions:

1. Go to the website, NASA’s Spot the Station.
2. Click on the magnifying glass on the map.



3. Type in your location. The map should take you to your area. You want to find the blue pin closest to your exact location. Yellow circles are basically blue pins that are so close together they’ve been combined, but you can click on them to see the individual blue pins.



4. Once you’ve clicked on the blue pin closest to you, click the link called “View Sighting Opportunities.”



5. Now you get to analyze your opportunities. There are 3 things to take into consideration. One is the Date column which lists the viewing time. Personally, as a night owl, I would prefer an evening viewing to an early morning viewing, but that wasn’t an option for my family in the foreseeable future. The second is the Visible column which lists how many minutes the Space Station will be visible. Longer is typically better as it decreases the chances of missing it. The third consideration is the Max Height. This basically specifies how high in the sky the Space Station will get. Higher is better, since it decreases the chances that your view will be obstructed by houses, trees, and anything else that might be in the way.
   We chose this morning to view the ISS because the duration was the longest it would be in the near future and the maximum height was 47 degrees, which was considerably higher than many of the other opportunities.
6. Now that you’ve chosen a date and time, you need to figure out which way to look. The Appears column tells you which direction the ISS will appear and the Disappears column tells you which direction it is headed. You can use a compass if you are not sure. For us, the ISS appeared in the west and headed towards NNE.
7. The night before you plan to view the ISS, you have some planning to do. Set an alarm if needed. Plan to be outside and observing at least 5 to 10 minutes before the expected pass. We were lucky in that the ISS passed 3 minutes after the expected time. If it had passed 3 minutes before, we probably would have missed it, because I wasn’t expecting the timing to be off at all.
8. Especially if you will be waking up in the middle of the night, gather all your supplies before you go to bed. Put yours and your kids’ jackets and shoes together with a blanket to sit on and some flashlights. You don’t want to turn on any outdoor lights when you go outside to keep your eyes adjusted to the dark.
9. About 15 minutes before the pass, make sure everyone is awake and getting their shoes and jackets on.
10. Head outside, set up your blanket, and lay down to view the stars.
11. Monitor the whole path the ISS is expected to take, keeping an especially close watch on the “Appear” direction.
12. Be patient! I was ready to give up and go inside when my son suddenly spotted the ISS.

Have fun viewing the International Space Station!



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Science Activities for Kids
Robotics Activities for Kids

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