Day 2 plan

Building the Red River Cart
Molecules are comprised of specific amounts in exact numbers. This is similar to many of the things we see around us. It reminds me of the Red River cart I assembled for Mosaic this year. I am a member of the Aboriginal Kin Club and we hosted the Aboriginal Pavilion.
The Red River cart History is listened to on audio tape http://cado.ayn.ca/lyle_story8.asp:

"The Red river cart was a European cart. Actually it came to Canada and the Metis were the ones that first started rebuilding the cart, because the cart that was used for hauling across the rugged land and it could take a pretty good beating and it was something that was terribly easy to make backing the old days.

Its just a matter of knocking down a tree and putting the different pieces together and a lot of times when the carts were made they were never used nails or anything like that, what they used to do was grove the different spokes into the wheels and that kind of stuff. So nothing, no nails were used or anything like that on a cart back then."

-Lyle Donald
Métis story teller

The Red River cart has three specific components. Two wheels, a box, and a axle. The students look at the model of the Red River cart. It is pointed out how this is a part of the Métis culture and that to have a true Red River cart these specific parts must be present in that exact amount. If you take a wheel away, you do not have a Red River cart...it would not travel too far. If you added a canopy, you would have created some sort of buggy, not a traditional Red River cart.

    If we were to symbolize the components as follows;
          box = Bx
          wheels = Wh
          axle = A

The formula tells us that our Red River cart has one box, two wheels, and one axle.
Then a question is then posed to the class, How could I most simply write the formula for two Red River carts? for five Red River carts?

Components of the LegoMan Molecule
    Start with the dissection of a Lego man. Set an operation situation, have a tape recorder going "beep, beep, beep" time it so when you remove the head a long "beeeeeeep" plays on the recorder. Establish with the class what the component of the lego man are. Together create a formula that could represent the components of the Lego man if he were a legoman molecule.
    Pose the question, what would the formula look like if we had multiple legoman molecules?
    Close by telling the students we will move on to identification of components of true molecules tomorrow.

Students are released to the library to work on their element presentation and visual aid