What is it?

Today we put out a hot air popcorn popper and asked the children what they thought it was.  Here are some of the the things they said: "It's a toy for hampsters","It's a coffee maker", "It's a machine to make stuff with", "Its' a pancake maker", "It's a machine to make wheels with", "It's a water maker" and "It's a brownie maker" and finally a few did guess, "Its for making popcorn!". I shared the story of this popcorn maker with the children, telling them it belonged to my family and when I was a child we won it at a raffle from a video store.  This popcorn maker is over 30 years old and it still makes great popcorn! The children were surprised to find out that there was a time that microwave popcorn was not invented yet!  

           

We were surprised to discover that one tablespoon holds 86 kernels of unpopped corn, and the same tablespoon only holds 3 pieces of popped corn!

We counted out 100 kernels of popcorn in honour of today being our 100th day of school.  The circle on the right represents the amount of space one hundred unpopped kernels takes up. We also discovered that sometimes not all the kernels pop, the unpopped ones are on the left, there were 16.

After all that hard work counting the kernels, the children were happy that they were able to enjoy a snack!