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Using a digital microscope (i.e. ”Web ägget” or Wifi puck), you shoot images taken with a microscope.

Then have the children try to pair the images with the right object using the microscope. Here it is important to examine carefully as the image may have been taken by a small detail of the object you are studying.

Hint: use magnifying glass as a complement!

Then let the kids look for exciting objects, take their own photos and challenge each other.

Try to draw from your fantastic pictures.

(Thanks to Hands-on pedagogen  for the idea)

1. Place an animal or other object so that it forms a clear image of the shadow drawing on paper.
2. Draw the object’s outline.
3. When the contour is finished, you can add details to it if you want.
4. 

• Mix soap mixture with liquid watercolor paint.
• Collect a bundle of straws together.
• Put the bundle in the color mixture.
• Then blow the bubbles onto paper – they create beautiful patterns.
• Bend aluminum foil in different shapes and soak them in the seed solution.
• Blow the bubbles on the paper.Why not take a look at some chemistry at the same time –

  Blow soap bubbles through geometric figures:

• The children form geometric figures of aluminum wire.
  
• What shape does a soap bubble come from a square stick?
• From an oval?
• What do that depend on?

  Again, thanks lekolar.fi for the ideas!

Tinybop (https://tinybop.com/) is a company with several apps in the STEM-sphere. I just downloaded their ”Tiny Machines” where you can tets foundational concepts from physics like wedges, pulleus, levers and more.

It’s not always that you can try the physical in real life, or it can also give ideas to try out.

At least here in Turku isn’t the summer booming in full force, but you still want to enjoy the pre-summer. Why then not drag in som leaves, press them in a plant press (would probably work with just underneath some heavy books). Mix theReady-Mix paint with som Artmedium varnish, that the surface will be shiny. Paint the leaves to look like insects.

Idéa taken from lekolar.fi.

A positive attitude toward math boosts the brain’s memory center and predicts math performance independent of factors such as a child’s IQ, a Stanford study has found.

<img src=’//med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/01/positive-attitude-toward-math-predicts-math-achievement-in-kids/_jcr_content/main/image.img.620.high.jpg’ alt=’Happy young girl doing math on a chalkboard’>

A new Stanford study found that kids with a positive attitude toward math performed better in the subject.

For the first time, scientists have identified the brain pathway that links a positive attitude toward math to achievement in the subject.

In a study of elementary school students, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that having a positive attitude about math was connected to better function of the hippocampus, an important memory center in the brain, during performance of arithmetic problems.

The findings were published online Jan. 24 in Psychological Science.

Educators have long observed higher math scores in children who show more interest in math and perceive themselves as being better at it. But it has not been clear if this attitude simply reflects other capacities, such as higher intelligence.

The new study found that, even once IQ and other confounding factors were accounted for, a positive attitude toward math still predicted which students had stronger math performance.

Read more here

This is not just a truth for STEM, but it’s generally good practice.

The 4 C:s are good foundation for learning:

• Communication
• Critical thinking
• Collaboration
• Creativity

Next time you plan for an experiment leave keep this in mind. Leave room for communication and ideas from the children, spend some time thinking on the result, let them have working together, not just watching, and leave room for their creative approaches!