Friday, January 16, 2015

Five For Friday January 16, 2015



Time for Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching! This has been a very long week for me, and I am happy to usher in the three day weekend!  Here are a few things I have been up to this week:

We started the week with a fossil hunt as part of a field trip for a STEM Earth Science class I am taking.  I was able to take two of my sons with me and they had a blast hunting for fossils of stickleback fish.




And keeping with that STEM focus, we also worked with our STEM roller coaster sets.



We had fun practicing our multiplication facts with these adorable penguin games.

FREE Penguin Multiplication Dice Game

 They are a freebie from Light bulbs and Laughter.

We also learned about text features using this amazing book.  Stay tuned for a giveaway soon!


It is a giant wipe-off book that is perfect for teaching non-fiction text features.







Last but not least, I am participating in an amazing giveaway with one of my blogging buddies, Celeste over at The Education Highway!  She is celebrating 300 followers.  Head on over to congratulate her!






a Rafflecopter giveaway




a Rafflecopter giveaway







a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck and enjoy your weekend!





Monday, January 12, 2015

Learning About Windmills - STEM fun!

One of my fellow teachers and I have been taking a STEM class to help us integrate STEM into our curriculum.  As part of our class, we have been very lucky to receive a variety of resources, but our favorite so far has been a KidWind kit!

With the kit, our students have been able to design their own windmills with the following purposes:

1. A design that will lift the most weight.
2. A design that will create enough power (electricity) to turn on a small light bulb.

We started our lesson by allowing the students to play with the kits, designing windmills as they built them.






As they watched each team try out their designs, they made lots of observations and developed several theories.






Once they tested a few out, it was time to plan some re-design based on the observations they had made the day before.





I loved how some of the students used tools we had used in previous lessons (rulers and using centimeters) as they wrote out their plans.



Some used prior knowledge.



Here is a video of some of our students lifting washers with their windmill:


Our winning engineers who lifted the most weight.  They were so proud!




Here are some students creating electricity with their windmills.








You can order these kits here (you could also use it as a Donors Choose project!).  Or you could try to make a similar kit to the one shown below.  Our instructors from the STEM class ran our school's science night and brought these versions with them. They used wood dowels, closet rod, PVC pipe, swimming “noodles” cut 3 inches wide, a washer, and hot glue to make them.  




They poked barbecue skewers into the pool noodle and taped paper plates to them to make their windmill panels.

Have you integrated STEM into your classroom?  I'd love to hear what you've done!  If you have a blog post about it, be sure to leave a link in the comments below.


Thursday, January 8, 2015

Martin Luther King - I Have a Dream Mobile


I found this adorable idea for a Martin Luther King I have a Dream Mobile on Scholastic Teacher. I had done a very similar project with my 3rd graders two years ago, but I really liked this format better.

We first read Martin's Big Words so they could better understand who Martin Luther King Jr. was.


This post contains affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase using one of my links, which helps to support the blog.  All opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I have used myself and truly love.  

Then they started writing their dreams for themselves, their community, and their world.


An artist in the making!


A star in the making!


a future mathematician?


This one just cracked me up!


Finished Products


And our future Tom Cruise!

I loved reading about their dreams!  Head over to Scholastic to print out this freebie!

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

1,000 Follower Giveaway! Win a $25 TpT Gift Card and 28 TpT Products


I have been so incredibly blessed and humbled by your support!  I can't believe my TpT store now has over 1,000 followers!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  I have gotten together with some of my blogging friends to giveaway not only the $25 TpT gift card for the month, but also 28 TpT products!

Here's what you can win:

$25 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card

Winner's Choice from my TpT store













 Good luck and thank you again!

a Rafflecopter giveaway



Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...