...of a Science Education Course Student

Hey there matey!

As many of you may know from my previous blog posts, I am an elementary education major here at UNI!  This semester, I am in my science methods course called Teaching Elementary School Science.  We are five weeks into the semester and I have already learned SO much!  I am loving every second of this course, which is great because it is my LAST semester of classes at UNI before I student teach this coming fall.

Today in class, we built a fleet of four boats that varied in capacities and sizes.  After our boats were made, we were required by our professor to name each of the boats.  My group chose Bruce for our 100 mL boat, Dory for our 75 mL boat, Nemo for our 60 mL boat, and Squirt for our 40 mL boat.  If you didn't notice, we chose Finding Nemo characters to name our boats!  I'm sure you all noticed that though! :P

From left to right-Bruce, Dory, Nemo, and Squirt!

After our boats were made and named, we moved on to main event!  We put the boats one at a time into a tub of water and placed pennies in them until they sunk.  The point of the activity was to see how many "passengers" we could fit into our boats before they sunk.  We also had to decide on certain variables that we could control or that could factor the boats sinking more easily than others.  It looked like this:

One of my table mates, Shelley, putting Bruce into the water!

I believe this was Squirt!

This project was so much fun and I am excited to make divers during Tuesday's class!  If you have decided on becoming an elementary education major, get excited to do projects such as this!  Stay afloat future panthers!

~Vanessa, STAR