An Experiment with Candles, and Lessons About Fire, Plus a new Video Contest!

Ah, vacation is lovely!  This extra week of being on vacation is as nice as that extra week of being in school right before Christmas was hard- if that makes any sense at all!  I am soaking it all in, because January is absolutely filled to the brim with lots of great teaching activities in the classroom, plus conferences to go to as well!  Next week on Friday, I will be doing an on-site training at a preschool in the Dallas area.  So here's a shout out to the Lamb of God Early Childhood Ministry in Flower Mound, Texas!  I can't wait to meet you all!  Then I am flying (lickity split!) from Dallas to San Francisco that evening so that I can present at the California Kindergarten Conference in Santa Clara, CA!  My husband will pick me up at the airport, and I will be doing two presentations there on Saturday afternoon.  If any of you would like to attend, I will be presenting "Developmentally Appropriate Ways to Get Kids Writing," and also on teaching kids the alphabet with my Singable Songs for Letters and Sounds CD/DVD.  
At the end of this month, I will be presenting in Addison, TX, at SDE's Conference for Texas Kindergarten and Pre-K Teachers, and then at SDE's Conference for Mississippi Kindergarten Teachers!  For a full list of all of the conferences that I will be presenting at this year, please click here.  There are a bunch!  And did you know that I do staff development presentations for individual districts, as well as at educational conferences?  I would love to come to YOUR district and meet YOU!

So now I am going to tell you about some experiments that we did with candles during that last week in school before Christmas vacation.

I always like to read a fiction book to launch a discussion in science whenever possible, just as a means to pique their interest.  And this time, I used the book, The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie de Paola.  I usually use this book to introduce the poinsettia and then do a poinsettia craft, but this time I used it to launch a discussion of candles and fire, since there are lots of images of candles in this book.

I got the idea for the first experiment from Pinterest!  There are SO many great ideas to be found there!  So I recreated this experiment to show children what fire needs in order to burn.  The idea is that children should learn that fire needs heat, air, and fuel, and without any one of these elements, it will go out.

All you need are some birthday candles, something to hold them up, such as modeling clay or "Floam," and a lighter.  You'll also need a pair of scissors to cut one of the candles down to the end, otherwise you'll have to let your class sit and watch for a good long time while that last candle burns completely out!  I cut mine down to about half an inch, and even that took a good four minutes to burn completely out, so if your class' attention span is short, then cut it the shorter the better!  Then get a glass jar and remove the label so that everyone can see what is happening inside of it, and a glass of water.  Also, be sure to keep a fire extinguisher and a bowl of water handy, just to be on the safe side!

Start by making sure that your students know that this is not a game and that they must NEVER play with matches or fire.  This is about how to put OUT a fire, and why "Stop, Drop, and Roll" works.  Light all three candles.  And then...

Place the glass jar over the top of the first candle and watch the flame go out.  Ask the children why it went out.  Hopefully they will guess that it ran out of air!

Then pour a cup of water on the second candle and watch it go out.  Ask the children why it went out, and hopefully they will guess that it had no heat!  (You could also argue that we took away the air for a moment, but I guess that's debatable!)

Then let that last candle burn down to nothing.  It should be pretty obvious to the children why it went out; there was nothing left to burn!  The only thing my class lacked was the word "fuel" and a way to describe what had happened.  "Fire needs fuel in order to burn.  If you take away the fuel, it cannot burn."  

All of this will be leading to a discussion that we will be having in January about why "Stop, Drop, and Roll" works:  if your clothes catch on fire, when you roll yourself around and around, you are taking away the fire's air, and it needs air in order to burn.  Makes sense, doesn't it?  I think that once kids understand this principle, they will be far more likely to remember to do, and should be safer, at least in theory!

Here's a quick video of our experiment.  I cannot show you the one we did in our classroom, due to district rules, but I can tell you that the children were entirely fascinated and absolutely LOVED it!  Some of them loved the experiment so much that they wanted to repeat it over and over again during their playtime, which we did, with my supervision, of course!

Pin me to Pinterest!

HeidiSongs Sing-Along Video & Photo Contest

Submit a video or photo of your students singing one of their  favorite HeidiSongs songs or working with one of their favorite HeidiSongs activities... and win some cool stuff  for the whole class to enjoy!

Well we're doing it again.... this time were adding photos so everyone can participate! It's so easy, and there is plenty of good stuff to win, I hope everyone will get in on the fun!

Here's how to enter:
1: Check with your parents and principal to see if there are any issues with shooting and posting the students' likenesses to an educational blog. My parents get a kick out of seeing their kids on our website, but sometimes you'll get a parent who is "undecided" about media issues like this, and it's best to involve them in another activity during this time.

2: Have your class choose their favorite Heidisongs song or activity, then pull out your digital camera, digital video camera or even a cell phone, any device that lets you post or email easily. If you're shooting video, be sure to use a tripod or brace yourself well, since many of these devices don't handle motion very well, and we want to see your classroom at it's best!

3: Send us the file with the following information: Your name, your school, and the state your in, plus an email address that we can contact you with. If the file size is larger than about 1-2 mb, we use a service called MailBigFile (http://free.mailbigfile.com/) to easily send larger files up to 200mb, then send them to contest@heidisongs.com. If you have any questions, just drop us a line at the same address and we'll help in any way possible.

That's all we'll need. We'll announce the winners in early March. The Winners may even get a spot in one of Heidi's presentations this year or a featured location on the website, showing off just how great your class is!

Prizes Include:
–– 1 Grand Prize:
* $100 credit toward your choice of any HeidiSongs product*
–– at least 5 Honorary Mention Prizes:
* Any CD, DVD or resource from the HeidiSongs catalog, up to $20 credit toward any product*

Eligibility
Contest open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, 18 years or older.

Contest Runs From January 1st, 2012 to February 29, 2012, so get those cameras running!

Officials Rules are available here.

Special thanks to Julie Durocher's Kindergarten class at Memorial Elementary School (Yellow Song), and Mary Gregory Family Child Care (Go Song).