ingridscience

Plant pea/bean seeds in a clear container. Water and keep on the window sill. As the plant grows, the white roots will be visible through the clear container.
The roots are reaching for water and nutrients, which will travel up the xylem vessels to the rest of the plant.
Optional: add a worm to the soil to see it burrowing

Pour the half cup of milk onto the plate, or until it fills the plate.
Add drips of food dye into the centre of the milk.
Dip the Q-tip in the dish soap, to soak it up.

Dip the Q-tip into the food dye colours. The colours will scoot away from the soap.
If you hold it in place, the dish soap will keep coming out of the Q-tip and the colours will spread further and further.
Try touching the milk in several places.

What's happening?
The fat in the milk is in tiny droplets, separate from the watery part of the milk. (Milk is a type of colloid called an emulsion. The fat droplets can be seen under a microscope.)
The food dye stays in the watery part of the milk, separate from the fat.
The dish soap has molecules with two parts - one part likes to touch fat molecules, and the other part likes to touch water. As the soap spreads out and attaches its fat-loving part to the milk fat, the food dye is pushed aside. Each time dish soap is touched to the milk, the watery part of the milk and the food dye is pushed around.

Look closely at the soil and list the animals and plants found in the soil. If animals were collected form outside, add them to the list.
List students' finds on the board, and add invisible organisms - bacteria and fungus. Students can smell the fungus in the soil - it smells like mushrooms.

If studying habitats, discuss other components of the soil that make up a habitat: non-living things such as water and minerals.

If studying food chains, discuss what each animal eats and start forming a food web, by adding arrows to the list, connected by who eats who. Include plants, which need the sun's energy, and which are eaten by bacteria, fungi and other animals.

Summarize: the soil is full of organisms, adapted for survival, interacting with each other and their environment.

Discuss animals’ role in decomposition and how important it is - they remove all the dead stuff, plant and animal, and break it down into smaller molecules that other organisms e.g. plants can use.

Discuss recycling at home.

Plant the seeds/young plants in the garden.
Label with popsicle sticks.

Water regularly. Students can take turns to water each day.

Students can draw the plant as it grows.
Students can measure the height of the plants each week. (Radishes germinate in a week, and peas/beans within two weeks).
Make a graph with the date each time a measurement is made, and the height of each plant. Different plants will have different shaped curves.

Harvest when ready.

Keep a journal of what is planted in the garden and other activities related to gardening. Include photos, recipes made from plants and notes on planting and the growing plants.
If it is in a binder, loose pages of drawings/graphs etc can be easily inserted.
Students can take the journal home.

Students make a drawing on a piece of paper and lay it under the angled mirrors so that a symmetrical shape is made by the mirrors.
By changing how far apart the mirrors are, the number of images in the mirrors changes.
Also try looking at your face, or other objects, in the mirrors, and changing the angles.

For a lesson on light:
Allow students to explore, then discuss with them the principles of light that they are observing: Some objects are visible because they reflect light. Light travels in straight lines. Light can be reflected multiples times. To see an object, light from it must come into our eyes.

For a lesson on snowflakes with younger students:
Ask students to make a six pointed star, like a snowflake. Change the decorations on the point to make differently-shaped snowflakes, but they all have six points.

For a lesson on rotational symmetry for older students:
By changing the angle between the hinged mirrors, students make symmetrical shapes with different orders of symmetry. The angle between the mirrors determines the number of images.
Ask students to record the the number of images (including the original) and the corresponding angle, to fill in the Mirror Symmetry data sheet.
When the data is plotted on a class graph it will show an inverse relationship between the number of images and angle. The product of the angle and the number of images should be roughly 360, though there will be some deviation from this ideal with the class data (as is true for any real data).

For a lesson on relationships and patterns for younger students:
Students can draw the angle of the mirrors (by tracing along the inside edge of the hinged mirrors), and write down the number of images they see. Then can be asked if the number of images gets larger / smaller as the gap between the mirrors gets wider / smaller. (There is an inverse relationship: larger number of images with a smaller gap (angle) between the mirrors.)

For a lesson on crystals for older students:
By changing the angle between the hinged mirrors, students make symmetrical shapes with different orders of symmetry. The angle between the mirrors determines the number of images.
Ask students to record the the number of images (including the original) and the corresponding angle, to fill in the Mirror Symmetry data sheet.
Discussion: The polyhedrons of crystal shapes also have rotational symmetry e.g. a cube has four orders of symmetry and a hexagonal prism has six orders of symmetry. Refer to real crystal shapes already encountered.
Plot the class data on a graph. It will show an inverse relationship between the number of images and angle. The product of the angle and the number of images should be roughly 360, though there will be some deviation from this ideal with the class data (as is true for any real data).
Crystals have rotational symmetry, so have the same relationship between the number of faces and the angles between them. As crystals are built up from units in a regular ordered way, for each type of crystal the angles between faces are always the same. Sometimes, one or more faces of a crystal grows larger than other faces, so that the overall crystal shape is not as regular, but the angles between the faces still remain constant.

For a lesson on the symmetrical nectar guides of flowers:
Students draw one petal and draw a pattern on it, then use the mirrors to make it into a multi-petal flower. They can look at real nectar guides, and modify their patterns to try and duplicate them.
One petal with nectar guides can be placed between the mirrors to create a flower with nectar guides leading to its centre.
Outdoors, using plants that are flowering, students can try placing a folding mirror around one petal and make a flower with different numbers of petals.