Olivia's Scrumptious S'more
Look below and read about the fun and exciting labs we have!
Mrs. Smith's Science 6 Class
Olivia Falchetti
I'm a 6th grade student at Pioneer Middle School in Mrs. Smith's Science 6 Class. For Kindergarten through 5th grade, I went to Tustin Memorial Academy Elementary School. My family consists of Ann, Dan, and Gabriella. One of my biggest passions in life is playing soccer. Before I could even walk, I had contact with a soccer ball. Today, I play on Albion OC, a Club GU05 team. During the week, I participate in daily activities such as piano, Girl Scouts, youth group, soccer practice, cross country, and seldomly Indian Princesses. During my free time, I enjoy the outdoors. Some of the things I do in my neighborhood are biking, walking, running, skateboarding, and going to the park. During the summer, my family travels. I love traveling, and every place I go, I form a new liking for it. My favorite place I've been to is Yosemite National Park. I'm an outdoor type of person, and I LOVE being in nature. My trip to Yosemite was so inspiring, not only for me but for my whole family. My family refers to me as the "City Girl," the "Nature Kid," and possibly the "Tropical Kid." Any place I go, even if it's the worst of the worst places, I try to find the positive in it! Another very exciting time during the summer is when I go to an annual church camp. It's about a week long, and it's with my youth group, other youth groups, and different Methodist churches. I feel like there's not a possibility for someone to love something that much! The love of camp I have is truly unexplainable. I absolutely adore camp, and I feel as though I could live there. The amount of counselors, deans, and campers I know there is amazing. One of my biggest hopes when I grow up is that I can be a counselor at the same camp. As you can probably see, I have many, many passions. From spending my time at camp (in other words "HOME #2"), to traveling, to being in the nature, I fill my life with a variety of fun hobbies and daily activities!
Email: Oliviaf1951@mytusd.org
Location: 2700 Pioneer Road, Tustin, CA, United States
Intoduction to Science 6
Science Unit 6
On the first day of school, the minute I walked into Mrs. Smith's Science class, I knew that we would be engaging in some fun and fascinating labs, projects, and Hands On activities. This was fortunate because in my elementary years, science was one of my favorite categories. The very first week of school was when Mrs. Smith pushed out the Science Safety Contract Poster project. We were instructed to make a poster on Pic Collage using one of the rules on the Science Safety Contract. The rule I chose was Know How To Operate The Classroom Fire Extinguisher. The posters that our class made were beautiful! It seemed as though we hadn't even finished our Pic Collage posters when Mrs. Smith handed us MORE instructions for a "Tinfoil Invention" challenge. My table group was handed a few popsicle sticks and a piece of tin foil. The instructions on our table told us to make an invention only using the supplies we were given. Where do we even start?!?! As we put our minds together, we came up with the PencilCup 3000. Our invention was for organizational purposes. It's used to store your pens, pencils, erasers, post-it notes, scissors, and any other "school" utensils. Our invention surprisingly stood up without us needing to prop it with something! During the week we presented our PencilCup 3000, Mrs. Smith handed out an article. As I grabbed the article, my heart pulse began to pump. This was a National Geographic Article! I absolutely love National Geographic! I started to glance at the paper, and as I read, I was amazed at how Billy the Porcupine Pufferfish squirts water out of his tank when he's hungry! With this article, we did ERWC, we drew many pictures of Billy, and we also wrote a few paragraphs on the story, including a conclusion and a conclusion reflection. The class had fun learning about Billy, and before we even knew it, we had started the next project. Following the Pufferfish Article was the Triple Beam Balance and the Metric Ruler. These are both handy tools we should know how to use in the future. We completed many labs on the Triple Beam Balance. A few of the things we weighted were safety goggles, a cork, pens, pencils, a turtle, a penny, and almost every other thing you can think of! While using the Metric Ruler, we learned how to measure items and convert millimeters to centimeters, or vise versa. Mrs. Smith's science class did tons of labs and activities involving the Triple Beam Balance and the Metric Ruler. My absolute FAVORITE science activity is using a microscope, and I was in for some luck, because apparently our next Hands On activity was learning how to use a microscope. When we used the microscope, we looked at Salt Samples, A Cucumber Ovary, Mr. Shafer's Beach Towel Sand Sample, Maui Sand Sample, and Vietnam's Sand Sample. I enjoyed switching powers (Low, Medium, and High Power Lens) and switching the Coarse Adjustment Knob. Finally, after everything we accomplished in the Science 6 Unit, the last skill we were taught was how to read longitude lines, latitude lines, and maps/globes. As we wrapped up our very first Science Unit, we were plotting and locating different places in the world. As you can see, my classmates and I have learned a great deal of skills and we've accomplished many, many, labs, activities, and Hands On projects.
The PencilCup 3000
The inventors of the PencilCup 3000 posing in front of their best selling product.
The PencilCup 3000 Model
An up-close picture of the actual PencilCup 3000 Model.
The PencilCup 3000
This is a demonstration of someone using the PencilCup3000 to hold all of their pens and pencils.
Billy the Porcupine Pufferfish
This is Billy. He has the ability to squirt water whenever he's hungry! Billy ends up getting his owners wet before they feed him.
Billy the Porcupine Pufferfish
As you can see, Billy is not your average pufferfish! He's much clever, strategic, and smarter than the rest!
Billy the Porcupine Pufferfish
On the back of the article, we drew multiple pictures of Billy and we wrote a conclusion on what we read. The last paragraph we wrote was a "conclusion reflection."
The Triple Beam Balance
The Triple Beam Balance is used to weight different materials such as metals, bronzes, coppers, and silvers.
The Metric Ruler
We use our Metric Rulers to measure items including corks, tennis balls, safety glasses, magnifying glasses, and many more cool objects.
The Triple Beam Balance
The Triple Beam Balance was also used to weight plastic, fabric, and rubber objects.
The Microscopes
My very favorite activity of all the fun and fascinating things we did in Science 6 was learning how to use the microscopes. I enjoyed changing the Coarse Adjustment Knob, filling out multiple interesting labs, and using the Low Power, Medium Power, and High Lens to observe different objects at different magnifications. I hope that in the future there's another opportunity to use a microscope!
Salt Sample
Using the microscope, we magnified small grains of salt at 40, 100, and 400 times big.
*In the picture, the Salt Sample we looked at was magnified with the High Power Lens at 400 times total magnification.
Cucumber Ovary Sample
We also magnified the ovary of a cucumber. It was so interesting to see the small lines connecting the skin of the cucumber.
*As showed in the picture, the cucumber ovary we were viewing was magnified at 100 total magnification using the Medium Power Lens.
Mr. Schafer's Beach Towel Sand Sample
Mr. Shafer's beach towel was another Sample we magnified. Mrs. Smith's Science 6 Class came to an agreement that Mr. Shafer went to Vietnam.
*We magnified the sand on Mr. Shafer's beach towel with the Low Power Lens at 40 total magnification.