Science Experiment

As a kid who competed in science quiz bees, science was never fun and play based for me. It was always facts, theories, tables and hypotheses that I had to memorize by heart. Even so, I found it really fun. Admittedly I was a little nerd back then. So the idea of combining science and play was a bit alien to the little nerdy kid inside of me. Science meant books for me and thinking of ideas to make it fun (even after taking EDSC113) was a little difficult.

The topic given to us was soil. I scavenged through different websites to find science activities we could do but hours and hours of pinterest later, it was still difficult due to the fact that it was generally hard to bring actual dirt or soil to the classroom and other soil substitutes were hard to procure or expensive. Again, brainstorming through conference calls wasn’t working either as it is hard to discuss things when the signal is choppy and you had to relay the message from one groupmate to another.

Originally, I wanted to have a fossil making activity (which appeals to the little nerd inside me who's dream is to be a paleontologist) but we couldn’t find small plastic toys to make fossils of so the idea wasn’t feasible. I also wanted to make an earthworm apartment but that would take long and I didn’t really know where to find earthworms from where I live. That, and the 'yuck factor' that I will have to bring earthworms through commuting.

Since none of the first two options were viable, we settled for something a little easier. Instead of earthworms, we got food wastes to make a compost for our science experiment. For the fossil making activity, we scrapped all that except for the cookie dough part. I decided to mix the idea of using the cookie dough with another activity that different nuts to show earth layers. I figured that we could use any edible material that had different colors and textures to show the layers. So instead of nuts we used fruits, crushed grahams and cookie dough.

Although this was the most effortful activity that we had, I think it was the most fun too. We had to peel and slice the fruits and crush the grahams in the classroom. We used the peelings and pits for the compost activity and later we got to eat the "soil in a cup" that we made . It was delicious and I think everyone enjoyed it. Food is always a nice reward for science activity, that's what I learned in EDSC113 and I think I will happily apply that principle in more science activities to come in the future.

The thing I learned in this activity is that there are a lot of websites out there that is dedicated to fun school activities like this. Even if you are not the creative type, you can just type it in Google and you'd be surprised with so many things that you can do to liven up an otherwise boring class. Also, you don’t really have to follow everything that's prescribed. You can mix and match parts of different activities you can find to suit your topic and your resources. Indirectly, the lesson for the day is resourcefulness. Because if you stick to the materials and activities made by other people, you might be pressed hard to find them or buy expensive materials.