Learning About Light and Making Geography Connections!

Students in second grade enrichment will be spending time studying the science of LIGHT.  We will explore essential questions:

How does light travel?

What happens when light STRIKES an object?

And we will use inquiry to develop our own additional questions and answers.

We are kicking off this unit of study in December by participating in a global holiday card exchange!  The theme of this years card exchange is LIGHT! Students will be making cards for other schools and in return we will receive cards from 86 other schools! As we receive our cards we will be tracking where they come from and we will also be discussing how the cards we receive make us think about light! This week we made our cards and got them ready to send. Because the holiday card exchange theme matched our science theme, I was excited to get students thinking about light as the introduction to this fun topic with a collaborative project beyond our school walls! The cards which we made used the theme of a star (one natural source of light we will discuss) AND we used a battery and an LED  to light up the card thus connecting to the idea of manmade light sources!  Students also had the opportunity to decorate their card with one of the types of materials we will be exploring--translucent tissue paper!  By playing with these materials at the beginning of the unit for an authentic purpose we will be able to transfer this knowledge to our scientific investigation as we continue with experiments and inquiry! 

The front of our holiday cards say "Shine like a star. Be proud of who you are!"  I am very proud of our second graders and all the great learning that is happening this year! We are a school full of stars!