Four kindergartners presented "clipboard research" to the class today. During booklook a few weeks ago Danny, David, James, and Aidan began studying several non-fiction books in our classroom on rocks, crystals, and minerals. They marked favorite pages with book marks and made drawings on their clipboards about their interests. The four of them and I met last week to develop ideas on the topic to share with the class. Today they shared their ideas and invited others to join in with clipboard research of their own! Our research is supported with two bins of books that our research team signed out from the library . We have books about rocks, crystals, minerals, volcanoes, snowflakes, and fossils.
Mason took the initiative to bring his rock collection to school for Treasures Sharing. He introduced every rock to us and described the textures, colors, and shapes of the rocks in his collection with gusto. He talked to us about how he started his rock collection by looking for rocks himself, receiving them as gifts, and visiting places and buying them where they are for sale. Later on the playground Mason demonstrated how to start a rock collection by looking for rocks. He started a rock collection with Matthew in an empty egg carton.
One of our project ideas is to find out about crystals by "growing" one of our own. We researched "growing your own sugar crystal" on the internet. We found a recipe that matched the illustrations in one of our books. The class watched the video and then worked in small groups to make sugar syrup for the cyrstal project.
Add 3 cups sugar....
....to one cup of water. Mix until dissolved and heat to a rolling boil. (Teacher Ann did this part for us on the stove!)
Add a few drops of food color to change the bland sugar water to a beautiful rose-colored syrup...
...and pour it into a large jar. We are growing our sugar crystals on skewers and will be checking them everyday through the transparent sides of the jar. It is fun to imagine the crystals that will form over the next two weeks! We wonder what they will look like and taste like. Stay tuned for updates!
