STEM Challenge: Play Dough!
Wrapping up our unit on matter with a fun STEM activity!
John Greg kneads his dough to get it the right consistency!
Mixing our ingredients
Tucker combines the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients.
The Materials
Flour
Salt
Warm water
Vegetable Oil
Food coloring
Measuring cups
Mixing bowls
Spoons
Science
Students have been working the past few weeks on the properties of matter, changes with heating and cooling, combining materials, and classifying matter. We learned all about texture, flexibility, and relative temperature and how these properties can help us communicate our scientific observations. We also learned about the ways in which heat energy can change matter. One of the biggest changes matter can go through when heat energy is added or removed is melting or freezing. Lastly, we discovered that when you combine different materials that have different physical properties, you can create something new!
For this challenge, students had to use their knowledge of properties to describe their dough and its ingredients. They had to figure out which materials should be combined to create the best balance between solid and liquid. They also had to explore the ways in which heat energy (from warm water or cold water, and from the heat created by our hands) impacts the consistency of the dough.
Further curious questions:
What might happen if we put it in the microwave? What might happen if we freeze it? How long can we leave it out before it starts to get hard? Why does it get hard? (Think about the ingredients!)
Sylvie is blogging away!
Claire carefully measures out some flour.
Sonakshi kneads in more flour to make her dough softer.
Technology
Students are always using good digital citizenship practices when getting online. For this activity, we used various resources to help us find the best play dough recipe that would not require baking or harmful ingredients. We also read what some other classrooms did on their blogs, learning the do's and don't's of dough-making. We then shared our experience on our own classroom blog here to help other students who are interested in making play dough too.
Engineering
Of course we needed to USE our play dough for something after we made it! The students were challenged with a task: create a structure at least 1 ft. high using nothing but their dough and some straws. Needless to say, we had some pretty creative results.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOf9IviWEPM
Math
Throughout this activity, students used various 2nd grade mathematical processes including measurement (volume and length/height), rounding and estimating, and adding fractions. We were mathematical problem solvers, looking for multiple ways to represent and justify our answers to questions like: What would happen if we doubled the amount of flour? Would we need to double the other ingredients too? Could we cut the recipe in half and make half the batch?