Better Living Through Science

Via

Last week I was going to post this, but I got interrupted by a bunch of rude kids who made me get mean one day. Things are a bit calmer this week. 

I'm pretty sure I enjoyed 1st grade when I was going through it as a child. But I certainly don't remember participating in some of the activities that the kids I now work with get to do.

A few weeks back, the teacher was instructing her students on an area of math that tends to give children a difficult time: fractions. Let's be honest, it gives a lot of adults a difficult time, too. As a part of that, she let the class make pizzas. Once the pizzas were finished and cooked, they were cut into four equal slices. They then answered questions about fourths and halves. Most importantly, they got to eat pizza.

Then, just last week, the children got to make ice cream. You may be asking, how is that educational? The kids had been studying matter and mixtures and causing physical changes. So the kids had to mix their ingredients and turn the mixture from a liquid into a solid.

So they each got sandwich bags. Then they got half & half, sugar and vanilla extract. They sealed the bags and shook like crazy. Then they got gallon Ziploc bags filled with ice and some salt. They sealed the smaller bag inside the large and, again, shook like crazy. This caused the liquid mixture to solidify to become ice cream.

One kid decided he didn't want his. So I got to eat it. Science never tasted so good.