Mindful Monday- Matter

Mindful Monday

This is where each Monday we are mindful of our pedagogy, slowly adjusting our lessons to match our theories.

 

Is matter in your curriculum?  We get to touch on it in my Kindergarten program.  I always seem to have a few kids who have difficulty understanding the concept of molecules making up the things around them.  While introducing how the molecules behave in each state we used our bodies to illustrate. 

Here are the kids pretending to be a solid:

 

I had the kids all fit into a hula hoop and try to move around.  We looked at how being so close together helped us to move together and keep a distinct shape.  We still moved in small increments as individuals, but the shape remained.

Here they are as a liquid:

 

We used a jumpy rope that had been tied together to create a shape.  Our molecules moved and our shape changed form.  It was hard to retain a circle, square, or any other identifiable shape.  The children also noticed that they bumped into one another frequently and were able to move about faster than when acting as a solid.

Here they are pretending to be a gas:

 

 The children were given parameters in the room and were told they were inside a balloon.  I even pretended to “blow” them into the balloon!  They were able to bounce around within the parameters, sometimes bumping into one another, sometimes not touching anyone else.  They saw that there was no shape at all and they were able to fill the entire “space” of the balloon.

This activity uses a variety of senses and allowed my children to really see what molecules inside the various states of matter would be doing.  My class is extremely active this year and tends to learn best through hands-on activities. That could be said of most kindergarten classrooms!  What have you tried while trying to explain molecules in matter?