This activity shadows the eTwinning Project entitled “Adventures of Atmosphere” which was founded with the teachers from Turkey and Italy including Sakine Rüzgar, Enise Ulu Çoğalan, Yıldız Kanlıöz and Eleonora Burnete.

The aim of the project is to engage our students with understanding the atmostpheric events such as snow, rain, hailing, wind or tornado with this STEM challenge.

Age of students: 9-12.

Time: 30’+30’+30’+20

Activity date : Between 12th-16th of April ,2021

Abstracts

Teachers will conduct preliminary investigations in order to help the students in terms of gaining knowledge on cloud formation, snowflake crystals and the role of clouds in the growth of snowflake crystals. Additionally, they will also help them how to explore TRMM images and data; and the role clouds play in the Earth’s radiant budget and climate.

What is Snowflake ?

When people say snowflake, they often mean snow crystal. The latter is a single crystal of ice, within which the water molecules are all lined up in a precise hexagonal array. Snow crystals display that characteristic six-fold symmetry

Objectives

1. Being creative to solve a problem,
2. Knowing how to clearly express their thoughts in an organized way,
3. Learning how a snowflake grow up in the clouds,
4. Giving students the opportunity to learn about the fact via snowflakes simulation and hands-on learning
5. Developing science skills like observation, classification, measurement
6. Improving foreign language skills.

Real – life Problem

Ask children if they have ever seen snow/ they liked it or not? (For those students who have not experienced snow, ask if anyone has ever described it to them. Do you think they would like snow?)

Open Break Out Rooms  (with group of four students discussing the topic in international groups. Each group has a representative that coordinates the group.)

Real-life questions

We used a brainstorming activity to answer the following questions;

How is a snowflake created in the clouds?

Is it possible make snow or a snowman at home or school?

Could you have two perfectly identical snowflakes?

Teaching   Resources

Required materials

STEP 1 Science

Materials for the experiment

Baking Soda

White Vinegar

Water

Black Beads or Google Eyes

Orange Foam Paper

Basters, Eyedroppers, or Spoons

Glitter and Sequins 

HOW TO MAKE BAKING SODA SNOWMEN!

STEP 1. Start by slowly adding water to a good amount of baking soda. You want to add just enough until you get a crumbly but pack-able dough. It shouldn’t be runny or soupy or like our snowflake 

STEP 2. Pack the mixture together to make them into snowballs! You can use plastic cling wrap to help keep the shape if needed.

STEP 3. Gently press two beads or google eyes and an orange triangle nose into the snowball for the snowman’s face. You can also mix in buttons and sequins! STEP 4. Place in the freezer for as long as you like. The more frozen the balls, the longer it will take to melt them!

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SNOWMEN?

It may look like the baking soda snowmen are melting away when you add the vinegar.  However melting involves a physical change of state from a solid to a liquid, like our melting crayons.

Instead of melting, a chemical reaction occurs between the baking soda and the vinegar and it produces a new substance called carbon dioxide gas. This happens when a base (baking soda) and an acid (vinegar) mix. That’s all the bubbling and fizzing you can hear, see, smell, and touch!

https://youtu.be/6UY0K2VI744   use this video to get an idea on how to do it.

http://www.snowcrystals.com/designer/designer.html

We give the students one half of the snowflakes’ photos and they draw the symmetric of the snowflake crystals.

STEP 2 Art

How to draw a snowflake?

There ere are many different ways to draw a snowflake.Our snowflake starts with the six arms – three are straight lines spaced at 60-degree angle. You can either just draw these roughly as shown on the picture

Draw two small branches out of each of the six snowflake arms. See the geometric perfection in the snowflake 

Draw a second row of exactly the same branches at the same angle. Just this time, position them so their ends are touching – and we get a beautiful six-sided star.

Join the main arms with straight lines to form a nice hexagon in the middle.

Students draw their own snowflakes by hand and then they show each other how they do the drawings.By doing so,they will display their creativity.

STEP 3 Maths

Cool Math Facts about Snowflakes

Snowflakes have six points and are hexagonal.
Snowflakes have from 180 billion to 10 quintillion (1019) molecules of water.
They fall at a rate of 3.1 miles per hour.Snowflakes have symmetry

When students draw snowflakes, they understand that it is symmetric and has an hexagonal structure that is an important point in mathematics.

STEP 4 Technology

Students use the snowflake simulation and create different shapes of the snowflake crystals.

They design the snowflakes with the simulation and learn why snowflakes grow up as different shapes.

Different temperatures in the clouds grows different shapes of the snowflakes crystals.

https://scijinks.gov/snow-crystals/

Assessment

Students briefly answer the questions asked in this activity and fill in the questionnaire on the topic.

Survey link  tinyurl.com/nr7dp4a4

Analysis of the survey    tinyurl.com/yrp6297j

Integration into curriculum

Water vapors are carried high in the sky by warm air rising from the Earth’s surface.

As the air rises, it cools and eventually it turns into water again

Snowflakes.have an incredibly beautiful, complicated and symmetrical structure.

With the help of this activity,the students will have learned the water cycle.

The process of water changing from gas to liquid is called condensation. When this process occurs, heat is released into the environment.

Outcome of the Lesson

The students in groups compare their results. (Were they the same? Different? Why?)

Here is eTwinning project link:

https://live.etwinning.net/projects/project/226427

Sakine RÜZGAR

This is Sakine Ruzgar. I am interested in doing scientific studies and researches. I believe in the power of life-long learning and teaching with full of enthuasiam. I am one of the Scientix Ambassador.

Creating snowflakes with similation

Making snowmen

Drawing snowflakes in math

The students drew snowflakes at online lesson