Woodland first graders learn about matter, create slime
By Bob Robinson

GREENVILLE – First graders at Woodland learned about solids, liquids and gases on Nov. 21 and 22. Then they learned, as in many areas of science, there will always be an exception or two… in this case the exception was something called a polymer.

Ellen Swaney, an employee of the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery, Dayton Society of Natural History, explained ‘matters of state’ to about 20 students in Mrs. Knapke’s first grade class and gave them a chance to create their own “matter” by adding a liquid to two different solids, and a polymer by mixing two liquids together.

Swaney started by asking the students what science meant to them.

“You make stuff,” answered one student.

Swaney acknowledged that’s one possibility but then explained science is also learning about the things necessary to make stuff, telling them they were going to talk about ‘matter.’

“Not being mad, as in madder, but matter. There are three kinds,” she continued. Matter is made up of particles called molecules. The particles in solids can’t move. The particles in liquids move slowly, while the particles in gases move fast and freely.

She talked about two gases important to life… oxygen and carbon dioxide.

“We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide,” she said. “Plants do the opposite. They take our carbon dioxide and make oxygen for us to breathe.”

One student raised her hand… “Trees, too,” she said. “They have something in them that makes air.”

She had children don protective glasses – “you have to wear them if you want to do this” – and started their first experiment. They poured a level teaspoon of baking powder (used for cooking) in one side of a small baggie, then a level spoon of calcium chloride (a kind of salt) in the other. She showed them how to use a ‘pipette’ to extract a liquid from a bottle and squirt it onto the ingredients in the baggies.

“Wow!!” Students began holding up their baggies… the powder had turned red and became cold to the touch; the calcium chloride created bubbles and got hot to the touch. Then they were told to mix the two together… “Wow! Gee! Look look…” The mixture had turned into yellow bubbles and the baggies were puffing up like balloons.

The students had formed the gas, carbon dioxide.

In the second experiment students combined two liquids to create “slime.” They had to stir briskly with a stick for a full minute then pull the glob off the stick and ‘work’ it in their hands until the residue water was gone.

In liquids particles move slowly. In solids particles don’t move…

The students held the slime up; it began to stretch like a thick liquid. The students then made it into a ball and pulled on opposite sides… it broke, just like a solid might.

They had just made a polymer.

Mrs. Knapke asked Swaney if they could say thank you. “Yes you can,” Swaney said. “You stole my heart!”

The kids yelled “thank you,” then followed up with a quiet thank you by throwing her a kiss.

Swaney said she had taught for 30 years; now as an employee of Boonshoft “I get to do the fun stuff.”

She was impressed with Greenville and Woodland Elementary.

“They are the nicest people here,” she said. “The kids are all very well mannered…

“You don’t see that in the big city.”

Published courtesy of The Early Bird