A&P Class - Day 1

Assigned reading: Pages 19-27. Stop at "Mighty Mitochondria"

Each class meeting is 1 hour long. I debated as to whether I should extend that time to 1-1/2 hours; however, now that we are into the semester, I am very glad that I kept it to 1 hour.

*I have a plastic dish pan that I am using to cart all my materials to and from class each week. This is working very well. I keep it in my dining room and add items as I go through the lesson in preparation. This way I can also take a quick look and make sure everything I need is there and ready to go. I suggest weekly items of paper towels and hand sanitizer.

Since this was our first class meeting, we had a little bit of a get-to-know-you time. I asked the students to tell everyone his or her name and link it to something that begins with the same letter sound. For example: "My name is Mary and I like milkshakes." I think the children thought it was a little silly and embarrassing, but it went a long way in helping me remember their names which was really the purpose of the exercise anyway. I am always so worried that I will forget kid's names. I know how important it is to remember people's names and I try really hard, but I am not that successful at it.

The next thing we did was go over the assigned reading material. I am not asking that the students learn vocabulary word for word, I want them to be able to explain what something means, not spit back a bunch of words that they have no idea the meaning of.

During this class we did the following activities:

1) Mummified Apple
Materials needed: 2 apples, vegetable peeler, two bowls with lids (A size to hold the apples with some room. I used 4-cup size Gladware containers.), baking soda, salt, measuring cups

The directions for completing this activity are found on page 21 of the text.

This activity need to sit for at least a week. We opened the containers during class the following week. At that time, I realized that I should have asked the students what they thought would happen to the apples. It was a little late to ask them once they saw the results.

We expanded on the activity by cutting the "mummified" apple in half, returning 1 half to the baking soda/salt mixture and placing the other apple in a container of water to further compare. We did this, then examined them during the third week of class. It was interesting to see what happened. I don't want to tell you because I had a picture in my mind of what was going to happen and it was fun to see if I was right or not.

2) Water Magnification
Materials needed: plastic wrap, medicine droppers or pipettes, water (I brought a pitcher from home to carry the water to the classroom and little disposable drinking cups to pour the water into for the children to use.)

The directions for completing this activity are found on page 26 of the text.

This is pretty straight-forward. The lesson I learned from leading this activity was: make copies of the word the children are supposed to be magnifying. My book bears the marks of not doing so and the pages are wrinkled and warped from getting wet.

I would suggest that a little research be done regarding water droplets and their shape and size and how that affects the magnification.