Willow Brook is known for doing things a bit differently! A few years ago we had a tethered Balloon flight from the soccer field.
This tagged Monarch Butterfly may fly from the Secret Garden to its wintering grounds in Mexico.
Electricity Bulletin board
Color paddles show how colors change when mixed. I often hear, "Wow, yellow and blue make green!" when the children experiment with the colors.
These 2 boys are testing different materials with a D-cell battery, an aluminum wire, and a flashlight lightbulb to see if the materials are conductors or insulators.
The cardboard cave has information about cave animals and cavern geology.
A view of the students as they watched the Balloon flight. Note the trees of the Secret Garden in the center of the school.
Teaching about Space can be challenging! Here is a flat paper scale model of the red giant star Betelgeuse in comparison to our sun (the tiny white dot in the middle!).
The Electricity Bulletin board is one of my more complicated ones! It shows the path of the electricity from the coal-fired power plant to the students' home. We have 18 wind turbines within sight of Oak Ridge, so I have one on the bulletin board too. This is 1/2 of the board.
Some of the students were excited to touch a live snake for the first time...
This girl is cranking a hand-cranked electricity generator to turn a propeller. The kids think it is fun to make electricity with their "bare hands".
The younger students enjoy learning about dinosaurs in the Geology unit. We discuss what the animals would have eaten and how they would have kept from being eaten.
Being the science teacher (and photographer!), I just had to take part in the Balloon liftoff. It was my first time to fly in a hot air balloon. The burner is very loud when the pilot fired it up. The pilot (right) is a fireman with the Oak Ridge Fire Department.
Willow Brook Elementary School Discovery Center
from 1995 - 2009. The ~400-pupil, K - 4 school is on a year-round schedule, we begin in the middle of July. It has been found that the students retain more of what they learned on that schedule. I always begin the year with Oceanography and Geology, two of my favorite subjects. I rotate the Oceanography subjects on the large (20 ft.) bulletin board every 4 years. This year I put up the Alaska board. It has a shallow water section with puffins, green sea anemones, a sea otter, halibut, clams, and seastars. The deep water section includes salmon, an orca, deep water anemones, and a crab. The other marine habitats that I rotate through include: Coral Reef, Everglades and mangrove swamp, Rocky Shore and Harbor. I covered 12 subjects throughout the school year: Oceanography and Geology; Matter and Energy; Sound, Heat and Light; Electricity and Magnetism; Simple Machines; Astronomy and Meteorology; Plants and Animals; and the Human Body. I covered the subjects for 4 weeks before taking down and setting up the next units. Unfortunately, I lost the room in 2009 when it was converted to a classroom.
Kindergarteners like to Catch A Shape, fishing for shapes, letters or numbers with a magnet attached to a line on a dowel. Not only do they learn about the attraction of a paperclip to the magnet, the activity reinforces reading and letter recognition. This boy was excited to catch a Pink Pumpkin. I asked him what letter those words start with and he answered excitedly, "P!"
...others were a little more apprehensive! :)
In the Heat unit we learn about how different kinds of fabrics have different insulating properties. In this experiment the students put their hand into a plastic bag containing a piece of wool (as in this photo), Poly-cotton T-shirt material, cotton, poly-fleece, or nylon. When I put a container of ice on top of the material the children can feel how quickly some fabrics allow the cold to come through. We then discuss why people wear certain kinds of fabrics in summer and others in winter.
This student is getting ready to put the Smilodon (Saber-tooth Cat) into the "tar pit". The tar is a black "slime" that I bought at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.
The Secret Garden has milkweed plants so we can raise Monarch Butterflies in the classrooms. Here I am holding a butterfly that we tagged just before releasing it. Some years every class is able to raise a caterpillar to watch the life cycle.
This is my Sound, Heat, and Light Bulletin board.
Fishing for shapes in the magnet class is fun for the younger students.
Sometimes we have "special guests" who come to visit. The aunt of one of the students brought two of her cornsnakes to share. It was a great opportunity for the kids to learn about these beautiful, beneficial animals.
One of the kids' favorite activities in the Geology unit is the cave, a large cardboard box with black paper, "water pools" and paper stagmites and stalactites. They can close the box and use the flashlight to see in the dark.
These huge magnifiers are a big hit among the kids when we study Light. The kids get a big kick out of seeing each other with distorted features!