Sunday, February 16, 2020

Psychedelic STEAM


A distinguishing characteristic of Montessori education is the use of hands-on materials (aka “concrete manipulatives”), especially those that Montessori herself invented for math. The lower elementary physical science curriculum gives children key experiences with astronomy, physics, and chemistry. Experiment topics include gravity, inertia, forces and motion, volcanism, magnetism, electricity, buoyancy and density, plate tectonics, erosion, states of matter, and simple machines.


In the past six weeks, we’ve done a slew of experiments around buoyancy, yeast, surface tension, and effervescence. Most of these physical science concepts revolve around water, as we have been studying states of matter and the properties of liquids in physics and geology. In the next few weeks, we will also be going on a field trip to the local Water Conservation Garden to explore water usage in our desert biome of southern California.



Density & Buoyancy


One element of setting up a hands-on science experiment with a mixed-age class of children (ages 6-9) is preparation. I gathered nine glasses and nine different bags of objects from our Practical Life shelves and our STEAM supply cart: foam rollers, marbles, shells, rubber bands, plastic screws, buttons, pasta, and golf tees. The children had a sheet on which they could predict whether the objects would sink (density) or float (buoyancy), write the actual result, and hypothesize why the objects floated or sank. Partners took turns on individual tables. It was a fun activity that the children cleaned up themselves!



Elephant Toothpaste

Some traditional Montessori experiments contain hard-to-find materials or materials that I sometimes feel unsafe allowing children to use (iron filings?). Children are very visual and love (even if they see it every year) an exploding volcano -- but everyone does that. Although it is cool every time, one of the things I need to do as a Montessori educator is mix it up every year. I love when older students see a lesson with the first years and say, “Hey, we didn’t do the Noun lesson that way last year!” The next three experiments are not conventional lessons in most Montessori physical science albums. 


What would scientist Maria Montessori do in 2020? 



Elephant Toothpaste includes a bottle, warm water, a packet of dry yeast, hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and streaks of food coloring. We had started making a sourdough starter with yeast, so we discussed how yeasts (like mushrooms) are part of the Fungi Kingdom. Children offered various predictions about what would happen, reinforcing the Scientific Method we have been using all year. The experiment exploded, and the children loved it!

Surface Tension

The two surface tensions experiments were really great for refining fine motor skills. The first, which I’ll call Folded Flowers (a nice precursor to our upcoming Botany study), involved freehand drawing a flower on white construction paper. Each child got enough paper to draw two different flowers, maybe one with four short round petals and one with six long petals; decorated the flower with color pencils; cut them out very carefully; then folded each petals in to the center and placed it in a large flat bowl of water. Some poked at their flowers, and others watched as the flowers bloomed – due to surface tension!




In the second experiment, we reviewed our Folded Flower experience and discussed how water molecules join together before I got out a blue bowl and poured some coffee creamer in it. I added three drops of different food coloring with plenty of space in between them. (At a whole group like this with a small object that shouldn’t yet be moved, I asked the children to stand up at group and look from their spot so everyone could see.) I then stirred it with a chopstick and walked that psychedelic mixture around circle. Finally, I added a single drop of dish soap, and the color pushed across the surface to the outer edge. The magic of science! The magic of the real. It reminded one student of our First Great Lesson using pepper, a very common Montessori experiment.




Effervescence

This last experiment contained the fewest ingredients and probably had the most wow factor. I half- filled two glasses with vegetable oil and added about a half cup of water. These separated into two layers, and that gave us a chance to revisit the idea of density. (Everything is connected!) In one glass, I dropped some glitter. Then I dropped into both glasses one or two drops of food coloring and a tablet of Alka-Seltzer, and the Lava Lamp began for a few minutes. (Another psychedelic moment!) The children noticed, after lunch, how the darkest color had fallen to the bottom since the sodium bicarbonate and citric acid in the Alka-Seltzer had finished dissolving!


Montessori education is STEAM education.