The fifth-grade students of Sophia Academy have been exercising their knowledge of the Scientific Method through some unorthodox activities meant to teach a lesson and improve muscle coordination at the same time.
Fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Felice Atkinson, first led the students in a bubble gum-blowing competition, where students gave a hypothesis on how many pieces of gum they could chew and still blow a bubble. The next day, students took part in a watermelon seed-spitting contest with the kindergarten class, where they guessed the distance they could catapult a seed, checking their results against their hypotheses to again form a conclusion.
The fun activities gave the students a chance to improve their understanding of the scientific method, but there was more to the fun than meets the eye. Mrs. Atkinson explains “A byproduct of this science experiment is strengthening the mouth to improve speech production and language skills. Accurate tongue placement is necessary for spoken communication, phonological processing, and reading skills. Chewing large amounts of gum, and blowing bubbles, and seed spitting uses a variety of mouth muscles that help accomplish all of these skills.”
