Science Fridays

October 30, 2020 Looking for educational science activity ideas to do at home? We will publish a new activity every Friday. Download each week’s activity pdf with instructions. Have fun and stay curious! Activity: Crystal Clear (pdf) Topics: Chemistry, Supersaturated solution,

September 18, 2020 Looking for educational science activity ideas to do at home? We will publish a new activity every Friday. Download each week’s activity pdf with instructions. Have fun and stay curious! Activity: Energy Transfer (pdf) Topics: Physics, Gravitational Potential

September 11, 2020 Looking for educational science activity ideas to do at home? We will publish a new activity every Friday. Download each week’s activity pdf with instructions. Have fun and stay curious! Activity: Skin in the Game (pdf) Topics: Biology,

September 4, 2020 Looking for educational science activity ideas to do at home? We will publish a new activity every Friday. Download each week’s activity pdf with instructions. Have fun and stay curious! Activity: Floating Egg (pdf) Topics: Density, Volume, Solutions

August 28, 2020 Looking for educational science activity ideas to do at home? We will publish a new activity every Friday. Download each week’s activity pdf with instructions. Have fun and stay curious! Activity: Fool the Eyes (pdf) Topics: Optics, Angle

August 21, 2020 Looking for educational science activity ideas to do at home? We will publish a new activity every Friday. Download each week’s activity pdf with instructions. Have fun and stay curious! Activity: A Lump of Sugar (pdf) Topics: Nutrition,

May 31, 2019 This Friday concluded the year of 2018-2019 lunchtime science at Wade Thomas Elementary School. We invited Brian Kaplan, science teacher and founder of Mobile Maker Club, to share his incredible collection of maker projects. The truck was

May 24, 2019 We’ve noticed the fascination in the students’ eyes when looking at the Newton’s cradle in motion. So we brought back the toy and let everyone have a chance to play. We also encouraged building a long line

May 17, 2019 What’s a better way to wrap up a week than to make a stop-motion animation using with Stop Motion Studio app? But before we worked creatively in teams on the script and play dough characters, we talked

May 3, 2019 With so much unusual rain, we focused on the properties of water this week. Aside from free play using spray bottles, pipettes, beakers, and a small pool filled with water, we did some specific experiments such as:

April 26, 2019 This Monday was Earth Day, so we celebrated the belated holiday by learning about the structure of our planet. Using colored play dough, students constructed the Earth: inner and outer core, inner (mesosphere, asthenosphere) and outer (lithosphere)

April 19, 2019 This Friday we looked at various maps, reviewed cardinal directions, talked about the Earth’s magnetic field, learned how to use a compass, and played with magnets. We marked four directions around a center of a circle on

April 18, 2019 Who can resist colorful plastic blocks and the endless building possibilities they present? Today we had a visitor from the original Play-Well Marin activity center (founded in 1997) right her in San Anselmo, the first of what became

April 5, 2019 It’s springtime, and time to think of what to grow in the garden. On this Friday, kids came by the Science Fridays area to play in the dirt and plant some seeds. We are looking forward to

March 29, 2019 We gave an introduction to the periodic table of elements by showing the everyday stuff (water, hydrogen peroxide, citric acid, sugar, vinegar, baking soda), and its molecular composition and talked about how the same building blocks (Hydrogen,

March 22, 2019 Students had fun playing with the classic Newton’s Cradle, making paper spinners (cardboard paper circle + toothpick), creating paper rollercoasters (paper + tape), hula hooping, and reading science books. Many shared their knowledge of forces of acceleration

March 15, 2019 Students were given open-ended play materials—paper and scissors, cardboard and tape—and were tasked to create houses, furniture, roads, or anything they liked. The design process “ideate/build/test/revise/share” came naturally through the exercise. Older students collaborated to build a

March 8, 2019 Students could choose three different activities to study light absorption, reflection and refraction. We lowered the lights and turned on a lamp directed at a cardboard box with tracing paper. Kids could either play with pre-cut shapes

March 1, 2019 Touch, sight, smell and hearing were the four human senses we focused on today, before heading out to use the fifth—taste—during lunch. Touch experiment: guessing a round object in a box (orange, apple, tennis ball, etc.) while