Now you may be wondering what in the world cake has to do with soil. But I actually just taught an entire lesson on it today. Okay so the lesson was actually on soil, but the cake made the demonstration so much more realistic -- especially to 4th graders. We compared soil to baking a cake. You can't just put the box of cake mix into the oven and get a cake. There are certain ingredients that have to be added. Similarly to get good soil there are certain ingredients that need to be added. You can't just break down rocks and have soil. You need to add organic material, oxygen, water ( at the moment I can't remember if there's anything else - does that make me a horrible teacher?). So during our lesson we actually made the cake mix into the batter that represents good soil.
My class was combined with another class for this discussion and I ran and added water to the mix and came back before mixing it. If course it was all watery -- the recipe called for 1 and 1/3 cups water. One of the students in my class looks at the bowl of very watery "cake" and asks, "Um, Mrs. Andersen how many times have you made a cake?" It was just so funny when she said it because you could totally see that she thought I was obviously failing at making this cake mix -- I almost started laughing, but was able to reply that I knew what I was doing. Courtney and I shared a good "smile" together. I say "smile" because there are so many funny moments during the day where you just have to smile because laughing would hurt their feelings.
Anyway, it was a fun moment at school today. Who knew there was so much information about soil -- we're doing an entire unit just on soil. CRAZY!!
Teaching has been good, but really tiring so far. I feel like I'm never going to get enough sleep again. Maybe I'll go off to bed now...
3 comments:
Soil is amazing! One of my college courses was "introduction to soils"...a whole semester learning about soil. I never got bored in that class and I learned so much. It was one of my all time favorite classes. There was also an advanced soil science course, but I didn't take that. I'm glad you're teaching your class about soils and it sounds like it was a fun lesson. My sister taught first grade and she always had funny stories to tell about what her students had said. What a fun job!
ok. Seriously, kids are so funny. Sounds like you made the lesson super fun and interesting! I'm sure you are a great teacher! Sorry that you feel like you never sleep. I hate being sleep deprived....no fun.
That sounds fun!! Did you add gummy worms to represent real worms?? Kids are so funny! :)
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