STEAM in the Primary Classroom: Making Bubbles

I love integrating science into my reading block.  A unit on bubbles is a great way to finish out the year. 

Since we're a STEAM school, we have to have several STEAM activities throughout the year.  In first grade, each classroom does a special experiment and creates a science fair board to present their information.  Last year, our experiments we decided to create our own bubble solution.  It was a ton of fun to experiment with creating that...but then also extending our understanding with other science experiments, texts and activities that created deeper understanding of the content and objectives for the reading, math and science.

Any STEAM unit will have activities that focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math.  I tied the activities in with other books on bubbles so that I could build background knowledge on the actual science behind bubbles.  We did lots of different types of experiments too! :) We did sink and float experiments, along with some density experiments too! :) For the Technology component, I had my students use virtual geoboards to explore two dimensional shapes.  They LOVED it! :) Since a bubble is a sphere, it was an easy tie in to first grade geometry standards for sure.

We were able to use foam three dimensional shapes to create towers.  This completed our Engineering requirement. For the Art, we created paintings with bubble solution and paint!  It was a ton of fun and the art was so distinctive.  The kids had a blast with that for sure!  As I mentioned earlier, the math was mostly based on standards that we could cover in geometry.  Kids can always use additional support with data analysis, and so, I added a few graphing sheets based on survey questions the kids could ask in class. The science experiment sheets walk students through the scientific method.  There are even bubble fluency sheets and a literacy center too! :) It has a little bit of everything and was a huge hit! 

 Our science lab was all about creating the best bubbles!  After we created the solutions, tested them and recorded our results, I put together this science fair board for my students to use.  All of the pieces of it are in the pack as well.  They are empty, so you'll have to type in your own results, but you can have all the pieces of the layout that I made.

The board came out great and the kids had a blast helping me put together the information.  I hope you'll be able to use a few of the ideas to craft your own unit.  If you just want to use the one I created, check it out HERE.