My students need cleaning/pantry supplies, thermometers, and plastic tubing to conduct chemistry experiments and materials for exploring the physical sciences.
FULLY FUNDED! Ms. Carter's classroom raised $907
This project is fully funded
My Students
Thanks to the generosity of past DonorsChoose funders, my classroom garden is up and running...and photosynthesizing right before our eyes! Reading about science or watching it on a video cannot replace the visceral understanding my students have developed by witnessing it in action.
As our seedlings push their heads out into the sunshine, we've been charting their growth-- and come fall, will be measuring our harvest-- with the goal of computing crop yields to help us determine which seeds thrive the most.
During this water-watch-and-wait phase of the growing season, the dynamic nature of nature is enough to keep my fourth and fifth graders engaged, but what truly sparked their curiosity was all the digging that came first. On dirty hands and knees, they marveled at the messy harmony of our garden ecosystem, the grit of it beneath their fingernails, its life crawling and wriggling across their palms. Nothing fascinates like filth! With kids, it's the sloppiest science that sticks, and though the soil and slug slime wash from clothes and skin, the hows and whys of the universe remain forever in my students' hearts and minds, their understanding evolving as they grow.
My Project
It is this smoldering sense of wonder that teachers are always stoking, the tinder that fuels it, so precious, we hoard every splinter and shred: Toilet paper tubes (I have hundreds), old magazines (I have stacks), empty yogurt containers, plastic bottles, bubble wrap, egg cartons, broken clocks, and a boxful of mis-cut keys that don't unlock anything except the doors to scientific inquiry. My students' science lab is quite literally made of garbage. And I'm not complaining because that's the appeal! Rather, I'm asking for help stocking up on some of the costlier elements of a scientific education, bits and pieces that will transform my cabinet full of cast-aways into lessons on magnetic force, freezing point depression, colloids and suspensions, the engineering of simple machines, wave length and refraction, states of matter and chemical reactions...the list goes on. With just a few key tools and ingredients, the possibilities are limitless!
In a quiet lull between the ponderous big-digs that bookend the season, our garden is blooming, though at the moment, its math and maintenance is not the messy kind.
But with your help, I can tap into the mesmerizing powers of some of the world's many other sources of muck. Science is governed by rules as much as chaos, and its study should be too.
More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Carter and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
