Flying Reindeer? Nope! Flying Cups and Reindeer

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Good morning!

This post is going to be short and to the point.  We just wanted to share our Flying Cup Part 2 experiment.  Our students were super excited and engaged, once again, each afternoon last week.  Even when they were synthesizing their results from part 1 and part 2, as well as what they learned about forces, gravity and mass, to draw a conclusion about why their cup landed the way it did.  The discussions were lively and rich.  We wish we you could have heard them.

After discovering that the cup landed mostly on its side in part 1, the new challenge was to get the cup to mostly land on its top or bottom.  They only materials they could use were pennies (no more than 10) and something to attach the pennies to the cup.  They all chose masking tape; however, they could have chosen liquid glue, hot glue, scotch tape, duct tape, electrical tape, or pipe cleaners.

The set-up

Scientific method written in science notebooks

Group data

One group's design

Analyzing results to draw a conclusion and wrote a reflection.
This was a guided lesson because of the rigor of the writing task.

Only one team's cup landed mostly on its side.  They concluded, with the help of the class, that it was because they put the pennies around both the top outside rim and the bottom outside rim of the cup.  This added even more mass to the already heavy side of the cup.  Therefore, that is where it mostly landed.  Other groups loaded up the very bottom of the cup or the very top of the cup with pennies.  Since that allowed the top or bottom of the cup to have the most mass, that is where the cup landed mostly.

This group's landed mostly on its side, however they had a great argument for why they thought this would meet the challenge.  They thought putting the mass at both ends would guarantee that it land on either the top or bottom.

Not only did the reading on hyper doc assist in our students' learning, the Study Jam videos in this hyper doc did, as well.  The first and last videos were the most relevant to our lessons and experiments.  In fact, one student went home and wrote another journal entry with diagrams and labels about forces, acceleration and mass.  His mother was so impressed.  We are waiting for permission to share that entry with you.  Receiving that email early this morning made our Sunday even more special than it normal.

Next lesson--apply the concepts of force and motion and gravity and friction to robotics.

Another fun activity we did this week was our geometry reindeer.  This lesson was created by Amy Lemons.  You can find it on teachers pay teachers.  We wanted to take a break from 2-step problem solving and the distributive property in math.

Filled with activities.

One of our favorite activities and displays for the season.

Next week we are going to review 3-D shapes with a stem activity called Snowman Stretch.  We found the idea on the KT Feel-Good Teaching website and combined it with the What Did The Shape Say 3-D templates and speech bubbles.  We are looking forward to the thrilling sounds we will hear during math on Tuesday.  Pictures to come next week.

She has a TpT store, too.

We did not get to our scarecrow activities.  That will begin on Monday, so hopefully we will have pictures to share next weekend, in addition our snowman stretch pictures.  We are also in the middle of our Anansi the Spider cinquains.  We will share those activities along with a Christmas Spider legend and ornament next weekend.

Once again, we cannot wait to get back to school on Monday to dive into the fun activities we have planned for the kids.

Have a super week... only a few left before winter break.

Kim and Anne

PS: We began our morning warm-ups with these December Welcome Messages created by The Curriculum Corner.  The best part about them were the quotes at the top of the page.  Anne and I are trying so hard to convince the kids that mistakes and failures are good because it means they are learning something new, and the quotes this week happened to reinforce those messages from us.  check them out!

Science and SEL--What could be more fun?

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Good Morning!
We hope everyone had such a fabulous week with their students that they cannot wait to get to school tomorrow.  I know Anne and I did!  This blog is just going to be a snapshot of some of those fabulous moments.

Monday morning, a boy who is really excited about the rocks we give away, decided to paint one for Anne and me. It says "Inspire."  That really set our week off on a positive note!  We are thrilled that he is inspired this year and has proven that many times already.  He is a hard-working, positive, helpful, kind-hearted boy!  What a leader.

In fact, he inspired some girls to paint their own rocks.  They collected rocks outside and painted them during their recess time. We thought they were painting the rocks for themselves.  How wrong we were! While painting, one of the girls asked if we would bring the kids together once she decided who should earn the rock she was painting.  She wanted it to be a special time, kind of like Anne and I do when we are ready to present someone with a rock. The four other girls also want to eventually give their rocks away to kids in our classroom.  We cannot believe the positive energy that is permeating throughout our room!  As soon as the girls are finished painting, I will upload their pictures.

Our leadership portraits are complete, and we sent them home Friday with some very excited kids.  They could not wait to get them home and show them to their families.  We hope they display the clay creations some place prominent in their homes so they are reminded that they are leaders. Their writing communicates exactly how they are going to show their leadership this year. This project was inspired by an art teacher I found online.  He had second graders create their own portraits out of clay.

We did our first science experiment of the year.  This is an oldie but a goodie.  Anne and I have not done this experiment for a few years. We forgot the excitement it provokes.  We only did Part One...Tuesday we will begin Part Two.  There are three parts with each one building on the other.  We know that STEM is the buzz word in science, but we still want to teach the students how to think through the scientific method.  If nothing else, it helps them activate their creative thinking and problem solving skills.  The discussions that surrounded each part of this experiment were deep and insightful.  Not to mention the energy and enthusiasm to participate in such a fun activity.

We used Steve Spangler's water cubes. After using four of our five senses to observe the cubes and record those observations, we asked the question, "What will happen to the cube if it is placed in distilled water over night?"  The hypothesis were interesting.

We did make observations after about an hour.  The cubes were doing some funky things.  The kids went wild; simply wild over what they saw!  But, that was nothing compared to their reactions when they took the cubes out of the water the following day.  Take a look at our results.

This is such an exciting activity.  We cannot wait to embark on Part Two.  We will let you know how it goes next time.

Well, have a wonderful rest of your Sunday.  We wish everyone positive vibes for the upcoming week.

Kim and Anne