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The Brown Bag Teacher

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Candy Cane Experiment

It’s the week before Christmas and all is well in 1st grade. My friends are not too distracted or crazed, and we are loving the chance to sneak in a few extra read-alouds. 😉 Our mornings have been perfectly normal – Daily 5, math workshop, and writing. Then, in the afternoons we’ve been enjoying some holiday-themed activities. Today we pulled our favorite Christmas treat – the candy cane – and practiced making predictions!

Our question was – What we will happen if we place a candy cane in a cup of water or vinegar. To conduct our experiment we needed vinegar, 3 clear plastic cups, candy canes, and paper towels. (Please ignore the baking side and foil tins. These were for another venture!)

We labeled our 3 clear cups, filled them (cool water, vinegar, and warm water) and then, made our predictions. Which liquid will cause our candy cane to dissolve fastest? (At this point in the lesson, I had not introduced the term ‘dissolve’ so our friends talked/wrote about melting candy canes.)
Then, partners took turns placing the candy canes in each cup. We voted to put the ‘hook’ side of the candy cade down, so more of the candy was in the liquid. 
It was SO fun to watch the kids’ faces as the candy canes started to dissolved. Within 2 minutes all three candies were starting to turn the water pink/red. It was definitely magic!
Groups of friends took turns coming up to the table to observe the cups and compare the reactions. 
As the candy canes were dissolving (taking approximately 25ish minutes), I would quickly snag the candy canes and show their progress. It was SO neat to see how the candy canes had transformed in the water – splitting into multiple pieces, bending significantly, etc. 
Within 25 minutes or so, we had our results and we could determine if our predictions were correct/incorrect. The cup with the warm water was the first liquid to completely dissolve the candy cane, while the vinegar was the first liquid to remove all of the red from the candy cane. The cool water removed the color/dissolved, but just more slowly than the other two liquids. 

It was then that one of my friends had a GREAT science question. Are you ready for this???? A asked – “Since the warm water dissolved the candy first and the vinegar took the color first, what would happen if you combined the vinegar and the water?” Woohoo! Don’t you love their thinking?? Therefore, we have our experiment for tomorrow!

As the wrapped-up the hands-on part of the experiment, we went back to our desks to record our observations and then, write about the results. It was so neat to see the kids use their new vocabulary words (dissolve, prediction, result), as well as, how they explained the ‘why’ behind the experiment. Oh to be in 1st grade. 😉 (You can grab the recording log from DropBox here.)

Well friends, I hope you are having a fabulous week and you’re keeping life somewhat normal. So, my question for you – are you able to slip in some holiday-themed learning?  If so, what have been your favorites so far?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lamar Stegall says

    Thanks to the author for sharing this awesome interactive tutorial experience! It seems you have found a balance between the interest of children and new knowledge that can be given to them. The photographs show that all the children were very interested in this experiment and willingly took part in it, so I conclude that you are an excellent teacher. By the way, the photos look professional enough to be shared on Instagram. It seems to me that such photographs on the topic of education and children always get at least 18 thousand likes there! And I am sure that in such cases, the authors of the photos use the help of https://soclikes.com/buy-instagram-likes in order to wind up likes on Instagram.

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  6. nur says

    I loved this lesson….I used it as part of my formal observation. My firsties LOVED it. It was a nice change for our principal to see something different! Thank you sooooo much!

  7. Angel says

    We’ll be doing “Creation Stations” (essentially STEM/STEAM centers) each afternoon from now until the holidays. I let my students choose from four activities. This month, the choices are creating a sturdy pipe cleaner tree that is freestanding and can hold small ornaments; building an elf shelf; building a sled that can slide down a ramp; and creating a mitten to hold the animal characters from Jan Brett’s book. Students fill out a lab sheet as they create their project, then they complete a process writing on the back explaining the steps to making their projects. My students love these stations, and I’m fortunate to have the support of my administrators to replace a Daily 5 round since there’s a strong writing component. Students work on these projects for 1-2 weeks, so they really get to spend quality time planning and testing their creations.

  14. Tracy Young says

    I loved this lesson….I used it as part of my formal observation. My firsties LOVED it. It was a nice change for our principal to see something different! Thanks sooooo much!

    Tracy Young
    Mrs. Young's Firsties

  16. Molly Maloy says

    This is such an awesome experiment!! We had our candy cane day Monday, but I am definitely going to be saving this idea for next year! So much fun!