My experience with LORD, working in the labs has been one that I will never forget. I wouldn’t have ever guessed that I could learn so much in such a short amount of time. When I first started at LORD, I was overwhelmed with the information, technology, and resources in front of me. I sort of felt like there was so much technical stuff that there was no way I was going to be able to make this experience applicable to 4th grade and other elementary grade curriculum.
But luckily for me, my mentor had such a simple yet loaded idea for me. Variables.
Once we started talking about how variables affect so many things, from science to day-to-day life, my mind began bubbling with ideas! Then the problem went from no ideas to too many ideas. I had to snap myself back to reality and think about what sort of lessons and projects were achievable in my short time. I began working intently in the lab and learning about how my epoxy adhesive could be affected by so many different variables. I could have gone down a rabbit hole with all of the different variables!
When I started to think about classroom applications for variables and curriculum connections, my mind went to slime, literally. Then I had to figure out how to take slime and make it a learning experience. Magnets! Part of the 4th grade science curriculum deals with magnets. Then magnet slime and its variations came to mind. I was so excited to be able to take challenges that scientists face everyday and allow my students to experience that as well as formulate a love of STEM.
