ingridscience

Do a selection of activities.

For a States of Matter focus:
Review states of matter.
Draw up a temperature number line and add the state changes in water.
Show dry ice, discuss when it sublimates, and add it to the number line.
Dry ice squealing on a spoon demonstration - the metal speeds up sublimation.
Dry ice in tubs on table groups to observe clouds.
Show students how to make tornados.
End with a lemonade soda drink (add dry ice to lemonade in a pitcher, then sieve before distributing to students for drinking).

Do the activities in turn.

The fluorescence activity is only the fluorescent rock.

These fun activities are not particularly connected, except that they can all be discussed in terms of chemistry.
I used them in camp and workshop settings, but can be adapted for the classroom.

Optional: hand out name tags, that depict the molecules to be used in the workshop (see image for baking soda/soda drink/rocket/bubbles lesson).

Introduce the building blocks of chemistry through molecular models, and discuss what they represent.

Do a selection of the activities, focusing on the chemistry in each case.

Make a simple hand-wound motor, to show students how motors work.
Then use motors for other activities:
Build a motor into an electric circuit, and allow motor free-play, including making fans, buzz saws and spin art.
Use a motor to drive a scribbling machine. Offsetting the motor (making it wobble) changes the art made.

Use this awesome website: onezoom.org

Activity grouping ideas:

Biodiversity in a Food web and Pond life
Model a food web of the temperate rain forest, and understand why biodiversity makes an ecosystem resilient.
Look together at Tree of Life poster, to find the living things in our forests, and see the array of other living things that live in their own ecosystems.
Pond dipping activity to discover the biodiversity of tiny pond animals that we do not usually notice.

Biodiversity and Biomes
Look at a Biome map, discuss their broad climate differences, including our temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest.
Optional: Sun's angle on earth activity to explain the differences in climate in biomes.
Model a food web of the temperate rain forest.
Camouflage challenge to model how living things in any biome use camouflage to increase their chances of survival.
(Also see Biomes lesson plan for alternate activity ideas on this topic.)

Biodiversity and Life cycles
Look together at Tree of Life poster, and note the diversity of living things, and how they are similar and different from each other.
Food web model including deer, to show how living things depend on each other for their survival.
Build a deer skeleton with discussion on how the deer died, and what ate it after its death.

Biodiversity of animals
Look together at Tree of Life poster, and note the diversity of living things, and how they are similar and different from each other.
Do two of these activities.
Find animals on the poster with bones, then build a deer skeleton, asking students to find the same bones in their body.
Find all the animals on the poster that do not have bones (a lot of them!) then look at an animal without bones: worm observation.
Pond dipping to discover the diversity of tiny pond animals, then find pond water life on the poster e.g. shrimp, floating pond plant.

Biodiversity and survival
Highlight how many living things there are in a tiny square of ground: habitat survey with food web. Extrapolate to the larger world and the enormous amount of biodiversity.
Animals are often coloured like their surroundings to help them hide (whether they are prey or predator). Students can use their same square for the camouflage challenge.

Plant biodiversity: flower colours and plant smell molecules
Flower colour activity to show how flowers use just a few molecules to make all their colours, which attract pollinators.
Plant smells also attract pollinators (and have other uses):
Smell molecule posting game for younger students.
Matching plant smells and discovering their smell molecules for older students.

We will look at the chemistry of our environment.
What is chemistry? Everything is made up of molecules, too small to see, even the air.
Show model of molecules, made of atoms. We will show what is happening with the real molecules using these models. These molecules interact with each other, break apart and form other molecules.
We will look at the chemistry in soil and how living things use the soil molecules.

Walk to collect soil then back in the classroom, do soil tests.

Look at pH results and discuss how the pH changes (see soil test activity).

While the colour is developing for nitrogen test, use molecule models to look at the chemistry of nitrogen in the environment:
Nitrogen cycle with molecule models

Then look at nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium test results.
Discus importance of these other minerals (see soil test activity).

Many other minerals needed by plants.
We eat the plants and get these minerals too, and use them in our own chemistry.