I was doomed.

My first instinct was to run as fast and far away from this place as possible.  These topics couldn’t be any further apart from each other!  After weeks of therapy and truckloads of medications, I finally calmed down and looked at this curriculum rationally.

I needed something to bring all of these topics together, so I searched for similarities that I could reinforce throughout the year.  What I discovered has been the backbone of my teaching style throughout the years.  I can honestly say it has changed the way I look at the natural world AND how I present science to my students.

Here are the four concepts you can use every day to enhance your child’s understanding of science:

• Atoms: Everything is made of atoms.
• Density: The amount of atoms within every object is known as the density of the object.
• Diffusion: Areas with lots of atoms tend to move to areas with fewer atoms.
• Law of Conservation: Atoms cannot be created or destroyed, only rearranged.

These four simple concepts can be easily applied to nearly every scientific explanation I have ever encountered as an educator!

It makes sense when you start to look at the natural world as a collection of atoms… 

Atoms are the building blocks of the universe.

The food you eat, the water you drink, and the gas you breathe are all made up of atoms.  And, since atoms act much like building blocks, I had unlimited potential for turning this into a learning experience.  The first thing I did was to provide a massive box of building blocks to my students and asked them to construct a box out of the blocks.

Some students used dozens of blocks to construct their box while others only used a few.  It became apparent to the students that there were several ways to accomplish the task of creating a box.  This provided an easy way to model the various size of molecules (groups of atoms).

When we examined these blocks, some students filled them up with extra blocks.  This provided a great way to demonstrate density…

Boxes of a similar size that were empty contained fewer blocks than those which were filled up.  Since the density of an object is measured by the number of atoms it contains, the empty boxes had a lower density than the full boxes.

Next, I instructed the students to tear down their boxes and make something else.  I allowed them at this time to share with other groups.

All kinds of new creations were being made:  cars, people, chairs, digestive organs (that is another story in itself…)

Secretly I had placed one group with nothing but blocks that were the color red and made certain they had used more blocks than any other group.  No other group used any red blocks at all.  Some students noticed this but I made up some story about how the red blocks were antisocial. (Remember… I’m dealing with 14 year olds here!)  Naturally, most groups shared their blocks throughout the activity.

When they were finished we looked at all of the creations.  It became very apparent that the building blocks had moved from the “red group” throughout the room.  You could say that they “diffused” into other structures where they had not been before.

At the end of the hour, I asked them to count all 5,288 pieces to make certain they were all present.  This took a little longer than expected, but after a brief search under a pile of books, all of the pieces were found.   Naturally, no new blocks were discovered (created) and none were destroyed, but they were easily rearranged throughout the day.  After I stated that fact, I had one student quickly point out, “Hey!  That’s just like the Law of Conservation!“

I’ve been hooked on these four concepts ever since and look for each of them within every lesson I teach!