SCHOOL: Laurel Park Elementary
GRADE LEVEL: 2nd
PROGRAM: Weather Wise
INSTRUCTOR: Craig Kwiatkowski
Scientist Craig’s Experience:
Today we all woke up to quite a surprise: a delay at school and no snow or ice! Well rested, I made my way to Laurel Park in the afternoon to teach Ms. Carnell and Ms. Butler’s classes all about weather. What an awesome day it was to join them. Not only were they well rested from the delay, but they were excited to be just a few hours away from tracking out.
I started off the afternoon in Ms. Carnell’s class. I was welcomed to the classroom with several smiles and enthusiastic waves. We began our program in a shocking way, by getting struck by lightning. Of course this wasn’t real lightning, but something much weaker. The students learned about how lighting and thunder are formed and then got to see how lightning and electricity are attracted to us.
The also got the opportunity to create their very own weather stations. We mixed up some chemicals and constructed some masterpieces. In all the excitement, some of the students had some wet plaster to start with and we quickly found out it resulted in some leaning weather stations. Fortunately, we had a few helpers and let it dry for a bit before we put them back in.
I finished my day in Ms. Butler’s classroom. As I entered, they were hard at work, but I could see a few of them peeking as I was setting up. We quickly got started and continued our weather discussions with some free exploration time with weather tools. The students were competing against each other trying to see how fast they could make the anemometers go. I discovered a lot of the students had quite a bit of air to expel. We saw one student’s reading get all the way up to 18 mph. Wow, that’s fast! We concluded the program with our famous cloud blasters. We observed the movement of air by filling our blaster with clouds and releasing them all over the classroom. The best part was when the students put on special party hats and I blasted them off their heads with the clouds.
Overall, I had an awesome experience at Laurel Park and hope the teachers and students did as well. I can’t wait to go back and hope they have an awesome track out!