It's Been A While

Friday, November 30, 2019

We hope everyone had a terrific Thanksgiving and is finding fabulous Black Friday sales. Before we head out to the stores, we wanted to catch you up on what's been happening in our world.

Let us start by saying, life happened...a wedding, an out-of-town visit from family, report cards, parent-teacher conferences, and the holidays. That is why it has "been a while" since we've been here, but we have been having so much fun with our Force and Motion unit, we really wanted to share our science and literacy highlights.

Our last post hinted at a Halloween STEM activity that would kick off our Force and Motion science unit. Take a glimpse of our fun! We recommend you check out any and all resources by Carly and Adam.  We have used many.  We also think the Hyperdoc we found is a valuable resource to teach the concepts of force and motion to third-graders.

Highly recommend visiting their TpT store!

The team designs a catapult.

Building the catapult from their design.

It's complete!

Testing!

Action shot!

After completing this STEM activity, we asked the kids to read about Newton's three laws of motion in this Hyperdoc, as well as watch the accompanying videos.  They had to discuss where they noticed those three laws in action during the catapult activity.  This proved to be challenging, but great discoveries were made.

Best Hyperdoc for Force and Motion

Based on their newly gained knowledge about the laws of motion, our students made revisions to their original catapults, with the goal of increasing the distance their pumpkins traveled through the air.  Anne and I were impressed with how well the students used their understanding of physics to make changes to their catapults.  They were  highly motivated to persevere through the activity which made their new results impressive, as well.

Revised design.

Revised results.

Reflection

And another one

Combining a hands-on activity about forces with literacy activities about forces,  helped our students gain a deeper understanding of the concepts.  We anticipated the students would apply what they learned in the catapult activity to our second STEM activity titled The Flying Cup.  In this activity the force of gravity was the focus.  However, applying their new knowledge is still to be determined because we have not yet analyzed our results.  Below is where we left off.  We still need to illustrate the procedure and write a conclusion about the results.  Reading the section about gravity, in the Hyperdoc, will hopefully assist the kids in understanding what happened.  This activity has a Part Two, and we will share it the next time we blog.

The scientific method

Group data

Class data...very interesting!

We also cannot wait to share our scarecrow and spider literacy activities with you.  We know these topics traditionally go with the fall season, but we have found a way to connect them with the winter months.

Have a wonderful finish to your holiday break!  Until next time...
Kim and Anne