Solids, Liquids, and Parents

This week marked the start of our first science unit on States of Matter: Solids, Liquids and Gas and it quickly became clear that 2B is crazy for science!  Students are revved up about their investigations, observations, working in cooperative learning groups where everyone plays an important role, and making new discoveries about our natural world.

I loved the moment when Kaelan raised his hand this week and said "I just know this is gonna be a fun day!" And it was. On Wednesday, we had the special opportunity to involve our parent and family community in our science lesson for Parent Visitation Day. Our mission? To apply what we observed the previous day about various properties of solids to THE TOWER CHALLENGE! The students morphed into engineers and were responsible for constructing towers while also being able to articulate why certain objects made a "good base" or a "good top of the tower." What I liked best, though, was that our parent community was invited to take the challenge with their student, as well in a shared investigation. As I drank in the picture of parents twirling aluminum foil and wires and manipulating cloth squares and plastic containers, I thought that my classroom just felt 'right' at that moment. 

Our students were proud and deeply engaged in their work as engineers and I ended the day feeling confident that our parents got a healthy dose of what life in 2B feels like, looks like, and sounds like: the electric energy of active children (and teachers!!), various solid manipulatives strewn across desks with notebooks open to charts and tables, and the busy hum of thinking brains filling the pale blue walls.