Mother-Daughter Discovery Day

AAUW (American Association of University Women) organizes Discovery Day for 3-6th grade girls and their mothers. There was one organized on this weekend for 3rd and 4th graders and we sure did attend. It was 4 hours of science fun! There were 9 activities out of which we had to pick 5 that we could attend. Here are the science activities that we picked:

1. Origami -Magic circles: The session started with the discussion about matter, its forms and how matter changes. Paper was identified as a matter and ways to change it are cutting, folding, crumpling etc. Then the instructor led us through a step-by-step instructions to fold papers and arrange together. Here is the beautiful pattern we got to do with the papers:




2. Gravity Defying Frogs: This session started with a discussion about gravitational force and the instructor gave example of center of gravity. Then a sheet containing a figure of frog was handed out to each kid to cut along the outline. The kids had to guess how to change the center of gravity of the frog so it could be horizontally balanced on its "head". They were then asked to glue 2 pennies on the front legs of the frog and fold them a little. And there we had our frog completely balanced on tip of a tack/pencil etc. The instructor then showed a device for stabilizing camera and showed us the difference in quality with and without the stabilizer



3. Dry ice is nice: In this session we all had fun with a "mad science" teacher showing us the amazing, cool experiments with dry ice.

4. Levers and pulleys: In this session kids were shown simple machines like lever and pulley. Kids got to see how some of these machines reduce the efforts that are required to do work. They got to learn the class 1 , class 2 and class 3 levers with example demonstration. The best part was in the end where daughters got to lift their moms using a lever!

5. Electrical Circuits: In this session kids and their moms made circuits using RAFT materials and idea sheet.

Overall it was an educational morning for the daugher's and moms too. My 4th graders verdict: I loved the Origami and the dry ice the best!