Attention Science Fair participants: T-Shirts are Here!

Pick yours up starting tomorrow 2/26 at MPR when you turn in your boards.

Professor Smart will join our school assembly on Jan 15th to help inspire our children, by introducing science concepts through cool and fun demonstrations. Todd Victor (aka Smart), a physical comedian and juggler with Jest in Time Circus, explores his fascination for how things work and his love for comedy to get kids excited about sciences. Smart has performed in more than 10 countries and continues to perform at schools, fairs and festivals throughout the United States.

Here's a fun video from the New York Times on the science of popping balloons, and the applications of this new knowledge to other materials such as glass. 

This year, Blossom Hill Elementary School students will begin 2016 with a science assembly provided by the Lawrence Hall of Science. The assembly, which will take place on Tuesday, January 5, will focus on solids, liquids, and gases.

The assembly will compare and contrast the three states of matter, and apparently might involve some “strange behavior” of fruits and vegetables – all the while teaching students central scientific concepts recommended by the California Board of Education.

The Wordle picture above contains some of the associated vocabulary and ideas that will be part of the presentation. Below (after the jump) are some of the terms explained, from LHS.

Are there any experiments that you and your child can think of working on together that explore the attributes of solids, liquids, and gases?

Then-Third Graders Sophie and Rachel Hernandez's project from last year's science fair provides a good example of the kind of experiment that explores these attributes. The sisters conducted an experiment on non-Newtonian liquids -- substances that can behave like liquids or solids depending on how you interact with them. 

Here is a demonstration of the attributes of non-Newtonian liquids:

The Wall Street Journal magazine earlier wrote a profile of the parents of Jack Andraka, a 15-year-old high school freshman who won the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in 2012. Here's the link to the article, but here's the key paragraph: 

​After chatting with their school librarian, a group of Girl Scout Kindergartners and First Graders in Tulsa, Oklahoma discovered last year that some people with disabilities have a hard time turning book pages. So the team of five Lego enthusiasts came up with the concept of a battery-powered page-turner in the hopes that those disabled people would have an easier time reading.
 
Exploring materials such as rubber, and the concepts of friction and force, they sketched out their idea and prototyped it several times until they managed to come up with a basic mechanism that was deemed good enough to be exhibited at a regional educational conference for librarians and educators. Then this March, the Girl Scouts found themselves in front of President Obama giving him a demo at the White House Science Fair.
 
The journey that the youngsters took from engaging in a casual conversation to inventing a new device is a well-worn one. The first pacemaker, for example, was created in part as a result of several lunchtime conversations the electrical engineer Wilson Greatbatch had with surgeons about the phenomenon of irregular heartbeats.
 
Discoveries and inventions originate from thoughts about the world around us. What conversations have you had with your children recently? Are there quotidian aspects of everyday life that your child asks you about … like why some clouds are “flat” and others big and fluffy like cotton balls? Or why jars with stubborn metal tops open after running the tops under hot water?

​Your child’s thoughts and natural curiosity about the world around them are ripe to be plumbed for ideas for experiments.

Start talking to them about possible ideas for projects for Blossom Hill Elementary's annual Science Fair today! Go to our Resources page for links to ideas, and tools for idea generation, or have your child attend our brainstorming workshop on the Flex Room at 12.40 p.m. Wednesday, January 13th, 2016! 

Here are some ideas for keeping your kids engaged in learning about science during the summer vacation:

• Checkout fun science books at the children's section of Los Gatos library. Here are some great titles: The Magic School Bus Series, Weird But True Series, and How Does Is Work
• Visit the California Academy of Sciences and the Exploratorium. One day excursions to San Francisco are always a lot of fun. Other museums worthy of mention are: Tech Museum ,  Nasa Ames Exploration Center, Chabot Space And Science Museum and Lawrence Hall Of Science. It is always good after a museum outing to have your child describe some of their favorite exhibits. It is also nice to let them take pictures and videos of what they are seeing. After the visit you can have them create a book with pictures and descriptions.
• Start a project at home. One really great summer time project is starting a garden. As part of the planning, you can have your child learn about the different flowers and plants and keep track of their growth and watering (of course now with the water restrictions it might be wise to pick drought proof plants). Here's a really good site with wonderful suggestions for easy summer time science activities. 
• Checkout the engineering and coding camps offered through the Los Gatos Recreation Center.
• Youth Science Institute also offers camps and events during the summer.
• MysteryScience is a great website where you can learn about science concepts and do the experiments

Summer is definitely a time for kids to relax and have fun. It is also important to keep them engaged and make sure that learning continues during the many weeks of vacation.