Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Chlorophyll

Today I did a short, simple chlorophyll demonstration in science with the short people. (I was sad I missed out on the paper flower lesson last week.)
They wrote their names on the back of paper plates before we went outside. I asked them to look towards the park and then asked what color they could see the most of.
"Green!"
Then I told them plants make chlorophyll using sunlight, water and soil, for their food and chlorophyll is what makes the plants green. I showed them how to take handfuls of clover and grass, heap them onto the paper plates, set the plates on the asphalt, step on top and do the twist - to grind the chlorophyll into the paper. I encouraged them to smell their green splotchy plates and describe what they thought it smelled like.
When we returned to the science area, we wrote"chlorophyll" in our journals and (when there was time) we played the pizza game (hangman) with the word chlorophyll. My goal was to use the word as many times as possible in 30 minutes.
I'm always surprised and pleased to hear them continue to talk about all of the chlorophyll they see the next couple of weeks.

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