SPACE IS THE PLACE
Students enjoy hanging out in their space ship.
Issue TWO 2013
A Weekly Insight into MMS Summer Enrichment Camp 2013
Summer Newsletter Week Two: 17 June - 21 June 2013
In this issue >>>
Beginner’s Play Ball! Little Scientists Space is the Place Woodworking Summer Olympics
Science at “the hop”!
Beginner’s Play Ball!
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Ms. Crystal Sorrow and Ms. Christina Wegner Ms. Summer Pitt and Ms. Ursula Hagood
Play Ball! Camp in the Little football, kicking a soccer ball, House was lots of fun this week. and shooting a basket with a The students explored different basketball. sports through work in the classroom, had a dress-up day, made football rice krispy treats, and completed a baseball art project. The week concluded with splash day and the students learned about water sports. There were many sports books in the classroom to read, and the students learned the song, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." The students tried throwing a
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Little Scientists
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Ms. Elizabeth Falls and Ms. Jessica Pytko swer is, an egg; the largest cell in the world (held by the ostrich)! So what can we do with an egg that is science-like and fun? Dissolve On Monday, we learned that the word science the shell with a mild acid (vinegar) and turn comes from the Latin word “scientia” and the insides to a rubbery substance. We put a means acquiring knowledge. The children raw egg into a tall drinking glass (or jar) and were cute when they asked, “What does covered the egg with vinegar. We let it soak knowledge mean”? A perfect lead into exovernight and then the next morning we made plaining the many different fields of science some observations – a lot of foam and bubbles. and that science does not just mean performing We then rinsed the egg and then poured more experiments. We talked about some of the vinegar into the jar, covering the egg. You many different areas of science: Natural optimally want to wait about 6 days; then rinse Sciences (i.e., Anatomy, Botany, Zoology the egg and rinse it off. You should notice and Marine Biology) as well as Chemistry, that it feels different, that it is missing the shell Physics (i.e., Astronomy) and Earth Science and has a strange rubbery feel to it. Your egg (i.e., Geology and Oceanography). will even bounce from a few inches! The children learned their “Cosmic Address”, Why does this happen? The shell is made of starting from an atom, child, Millhopper Moncalcium carbonate. When you mix acetic acid tessori, Gainesville, Florida, United States, (vinegar) with the same “carbonate” as baking North America, Earth, Solar System and the soda you create a reaction. The little bubbles Milky Way. We also talked about what Aswe see are made of carbon dioxide gas. The tronomy is and what types of instruments and shell dissolves and the vinegar penetrates the equipment an Astronomer might use in this semi-permeable membrane (called “osmosis”) occupation. and slightly inflates the egg and “pickles” the We also were able to learn about Electricity egg, by hardening it up. This process allows and magnets while talking about the Thun- you to bounce the egg on the counter, roll it der and Lightning we have all too frequent- along the floor, etc. ly here in Florida! The children were fasciDuring this experiment we were also able to nated to see how the positive and negative talk about the concept of why some object aspects of magnets work. The children now float and others sink. have a little better idea of what causes that all that thunder and lightning! We saved our favorite two experiments for the end of the week: the Eruption of a Volcano Here are some additional activities we did and Ice Sculptures with Salt and Liquid this week that you can also do at home: Watercolors. For our Volcano eruption, I Jet Propulsion Experiment: Balloon Jet: you have a papier-mâché volcano that I made many will need some twine, a balloon, a straw, tape years ago. We first talked about volcanos and and we used the back of two chairs. Thread why they erupt. I then used baking soda, red the twine through the straw; tie the twine on food coloring and added vinegar to create an the back of two chairs to create a path for the erupting volcano! The children are always balloon to travel; blow up the balloon and excited and fascinated to see what a miniature while holding the neck of the balloon tape the volcano looks like! Ice Sculptures with Salt balloon to the straw. Let go of the neck of the and Liquid Watercolors: to create this exballoon. A stream of air jets backward and periment you need to first make a block of ice produces thrust. This propels the balloon for- (I froze water in a milk carton). Place the ice ward along the string at high speed. This in a baking dish and let your child sprinkle salt demonstrates that a jet engine produces thrust (I used coarse sea salt first then table salt). from a roaring jet of super-hot gas. The gas Then we added dropperfuls of liquid watercolmoving in one direction produces thrust in the ors on top of the salt covered ice. As the salt other direction. melts crevasses and tunnels through the ice the paint makes the tunnels more visible. The A Rubbery Egg: “A box without hinges, key children learn that salt melts ice at a lower or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid”, a temperature while creating a very colorful favorite riddle from “The Hobbit”. The anThis week our campers became “Little Scientists”!
(while temporary!) piece of artwork! The children seemed to really enjoy all the simple experiments. I invite you to do some of these at home as well as to the many websites that have safe and fun science experiments and activities to do with young children! There are so many experiments and science-related activities you can do with your children; they are fun and inexpensive! I hope that this week has continued to excite the children to explore this wonderful world in which we live! Tuesday, the children met Mr. Tim McCarthy from Nature Art in High Springs. He showed the children how creative they can be and inspired the children to create a masterpiece of their own. Many of the children wanted to do artwork to be transferred onto a t-shirt. Our class decided to use watercolors because of their vibrant color for their pieces of artwork. The children are now excitedly waiting to see their work on a t-shirt! The children looked forward all week to Splash Day! We had a wonderful time and we are looking forward to “Back to Bedrock” next week (theme will include dinosaurs). Have a nice weekend! Ms. Elizabeth and Ms. Jessica
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Woodworking
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Mr. Richard Aslanian, Ms. Susan Salvatore, Ms. Rasha Choudar
It’s been a great week in woodworking camp. Each student has taken materials and built a step stool, a bird house and a small hat/ tool rack. During the week we also spent a lot of time working with tools. Different stations were set up for the students to practice using many hand tools and improving their carpentry
skills. Once finished, the carpenters then became painters and carefully painted each project with the guidance of Ms. Rasha. We were very fortunate to have Dr. Mark Clark come to school with his portable saw mill and give us a presentation on how a log gets cut down into usable lumber. He used a beautiful cherry tree to cut for our camp. We thank him very much for taking time out of his schedule to come show us how this process is done. We hope the students learned a lot and enjoyed the camp. Keep building!!
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Woodworking
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Olympics/Wild World of Sports 6
Coach Cam Parker and Ms. Samantha Mink
(You must hum the Olympic theme while reading this.) Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the 2013 MMS Olympic contestants. Representing South Korea are Anthony, Charlotte, Kaitlyn and Venu. Hailing from Zimbabwe we have Andrew, Aqua, Madumati and Sarah. Finally, traveling all the way from Somalia are Alyssa, DJ, Eduardo and Ms. Sam. These three teams have competed in a cornucopia of athletic, artistic and flat out fun events in an attempt to win medals as an individual and as a team. Campers were asked to learn about their countries and participated in a trivia contest for team medals. See what interesting facts your child knows about their ‘home’, or if they can tell you of the Olympic rings. A newfound understanding of appreciation for the real Olympics was created and fun was had by all!
Coach Cam
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Space is the Place
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Ms. Rebecca McCuller and Ms. Widline Senecharles Ms. Kyra Akay and Ms. Kayleigh Bush Five, Four, Three, Two, One...BLAST OFF!!! This week campers in the Space Is THE Place camp have traveled the universe exploring fun facts about outer space. We have created alien masks, water blotted our Earth, and push
On Tuesday, special guest Tim McCarthy of Nature Art came in to work with the children on creating their custom Space Camp T's. We can't wait to see how they all turn out! This Friday will be the first Splash Day
pinned and painted the galaxy while exploring outer space.
for our group! Campers are already SO excited about the giant water slide!
On Monday we had a special guest speaker, Mr. James Albury, from the Santa Fe College Planetarium come to visit bringing in an actual meteor for the children to touch and explore. We set up cones and lined up out on the field representing the distance between our
Thank you so much for sharing your children with this week. We have really enjoyed seeing their sweet faces each morning! See you at camp! Ms. Kyra, Ms. Rebecca & Ms. Widline
planets and then watched an episode of his PBS series Star Gazers. Our campers were completely blown away by his “movie star� status.
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Discover camp... at Millhopper Montessori School Thank you to our Junior Counselors for editing and designing the newsletter. Lydia Black Cristina de la Puerta Caryss Baldwin Tiffany Milian Laura Clark
In the next issue >>> Imagine That! Tiffany and Ben work on editing their summer camp news show. “In Yo Face Productions.”
Back to Bedrock!
For past summer camp news show visit: www.millhoppertech.com Click: “In Yo Face Productions.”
Little Chefs Mad Scientist Aquatics
Caryss works on this newsletter .
8505 NW 39th Avenue
Contact us at 352-375-6773 www.millhopper.com 8