Blog – Page 2

Easter STEM Challenges

Wow! Spring Break is over and there are only 43 more days of school left before SUMMER!!! This year has been a blur! I always start wondering, “What will my students remember about being in my class?” “Will they remember worksheets or test prep?” I really hope not! Yes, I use worksheets (sometimes) and I prepare my students with the skills they will need for standardized testing, but I don’t want that to be what they remember about Mrs. Taylor’s Class! I really try to find ways to hit our grade level skills through fun and engaging projects. STEM Challenges not only hit many of my targeted math and science standards, but it also makes learning fun and memorable! STEM Challenges also teach many lifelong skills like problem solving, cooperation, critical thinking, and communication. Easter STEM Challenges and Peep Boat Challenges are a great way to engage your students in learning important math and science standards. I also have an Easter STEM Challenges K-2.

Students create Peep Puff Boats that can move across water. Students go through the Design Process as they work together to design a boat that can hold and float with a Peep! Students even name their boats! My students love this activity!!! I also connect some important economic concepts with this lesson. (productive resources) Students test out their boats to see if they float!!

Jelly Bean Tower Challenge: Students will plan and design the tallest jelly bean tower possible using only jelly beans and toothpicks. This is a great time to review different geometric shapes.

Egg Experiments

Students will conduct an experiment to see how eggs will react with different liquids.

Rubber Eggs

Students will conduct an experiment to see how eggs will react to vinegar over several days.

Easter Egg Tower Challenge: Students stack Easter Eggs to build the tallest tower. A steady hand and planning is very important. I purchase several different sizes of eggs to add rigor to this challenge.

March Madness in the Classroom

March is an important learning month! It also seems to pass by so fast, parent-teacher conferences, third quarter ends and the fourth quarter begins, Spring Break, and it’s about a month before standardized testing!!

SO, IT’S CRUNCH TIME!!

It’s important to make learning fun, but also purposeful. One activity I love using is my Basketball STEM Challenge, it’s perfect since college basketball is starting their March Madness Tournament. Connecting important skills to my students’ interests is critical in making learning fun and engaging. Students love shooting hoops and learning how
to record their data. A good book to connect is Crossover by Kwame Alexander.

St.Patrick’s Day STEM is also a great way to make learning fun, but also cover the
skills needed to be successful on upcoming assessments. There are 5 STEM March Challenges and within this
resource these skills are covered:
fractions, collecting data in a table,
averaging, writing, engineering, and critical thinking.

March STEM Challenges
include: Gold Coin Catapult Challenge, Penny Towers, Penny Water Drops
Experiments, creating a Leprechaun Trap, and creating a Leprechaun House. Also, available in K-2 St. Patrick’s Day STEM.

St.Patrick’s Day Coding is also a fun way to introduce students to coding. Coding is a skill students need to be familiar
with. In a workshop I attended last week,
an entrepreneur was asked, “What do educators need to make sure they teach their
students to be successful in the future?”The entrepreneur answered, “Coding, coding, coding, and coding!”

I got the point, coding is extremely important for our kids’ future. So, to get my students started, I have
developed STEM Coding Challenge in a School Box. Included in the resources are some coding
worksheets and some suggestions on how to make coding hands on. Students make coding bracelets or
garlands.

Other
Fun March Activities:

March Everyday is a Holiday: Everyday has a fun holiday.March is a collection of random holidays that occur in March.March’s Daily Holiday Cards are a great way to engage students in a fun way to learn about fun historical facts. Everyday is a Holiday! Did you know that March 3rd is Day of Unplugging?, or that March 4th is Grammar Day? Everyday is a Holiday Cards have an activity or a suggestion that will engage your students in a fun way to learn each day. Just copy and put on a ring! You will have an activity for each day of the month!

February STEM Challenges and Winter Games STEM Challenges

Valentine’s Day Fun: Some of my favorite STEM activities are
Valentine’s Day related. Students get
excited during holiday seasons, and there is nothing like keeping them engaged using a STEM activity.

7 Valentine’s Day STEM Challenges are
a fun way to engage students in learning. I love using Conversation
Hearts! They are cheap! It’s way too easy to spend too much money in the
classroom, so I try to find items that are easy to find and not too
expensive. Taking students through the Science Process while engaging
them in fun Valentine’s Day Activities helps them stay excited while somewhat
under control.

Get ready for the Winter GAMES!!! I love watching the Olympic
Games.

I also love bringing sports into my classroom! During the Winter Games,
I use a lot of the scores and times to write real word math problems. (They are great for adding, subtracting, and comparing decimals!) I also use the activities as STEM
Challenges. Check out my Winter GamesSTEM Challenge Bundle!!

Teaching the parts of Circles

I also use https://wonderopolis.org
to give students information about the Olympics and different winter
sports. This is a great way to bring in nonfiction text to your project!

Another
fun activity is Valentine’s Day Coding! Students work with binary coding as
they make Valentine’s Day word bracelets. This is a great activity to meet your Computer Science Standards.

Christmas STEM: Ways to Engage Your Students Before the Holidays!

It’s important to keep your students engaged
during the holiday season. Some of the best ways to keep your students learning
and to prevent behavior problems is to engage them in STEM Christmas
activities. Students love STEM Christmas
Challenges. Here are a few of my favorites,
they are easy to implement and my students loved them.

1. Christmas
Tree Challenge: Students will
construct Christmas trees using Spice Drops and tooth picks. Students will have a limited number of
resources and will have to make decisions while constructing their Christmas
Trees.

2. Christmas
Present or Snowball Catapults: Students
will design, create, engineer, and test a catapult that can deliver gifts to faraway
places.

3. Christmas Tree
Challenge: Students will build Christmas Trees using candy
canes.

4. Christmas
Tree Cup Challenge: Students will build
a Christmas Tree using small cups. The
goal is to build the tallest tree possible and to see how many pom-pom balls it
can hold.

5. Newspaper
Christmas Tree Challenge: Students will build the tallest Christmas Tree possible
using 5 sheets of newspaper and a limited amount of tape.

Click here to check out STEM Christmas Activities.

Christmas
Light Circuits:

STEM
Christmas Light Circuits is collection of resources that will help your students
experiment while learning about circuits. Students love exploring as they
learn.

Click here to check out Christmas Light Circuits!

ChristmasMath Worksheets

are a great way for students to reinforce their math skills and
review previous learned concepts. Students will work on place value, decimals,
multi-digit multiplication, adding and subtraction fractions, fraction word
problems, volume, and basic operations. These worksheets can also help prepare
students for standardized testing.

Upper Grades Christmas No Prep Packet will make the weeks before Christmas Break a breeze!!
Add some new Christmas songs to your poetry folders to increase students’
fluency. Also add some holiday flair to your math word problems for upper
grades. Students will enjoy learning while they are thinking about the holiday
season. Writing Prompts and “Make as Many Words” sheets are included. Click here to check out Upper Grades Christmas No Prep Packet!

ChristmasWriting Prompt Cards are a great resource for your writing center. Simply copy
the prompts on card stock and put a ring in the top corner. Place these cards
in your writing center to give students who struggle with coming up with topics
to write about a helping hand! There are 24 different Christmas themed writing
prompts that will help your students engage in writing while celebrating the
Christmas holiday!

~OR~

Christmas Writing Prompts are on lined paper. NO PREP! All you have to do is copy!!!
This is a great resource for your writing center or just to get your students
excited about writing about the Christmas Holiday. There are also 3 blank lined writing
sheets.

Halloween STEM and Student-Led Conferences

I
love the fall season from the Pumpkin Spice to pumpkins and mums by my
door. Friday night football games and
the cool breeze in the air, make this one of my favorite seasons.

STEM
is a huge element of my classroom. My Halloween STEM Challenges are a great way
to hit the Next Generation Science Standards for Engineering and Design. Check out the K-2 Halloween STEM and the 3-5Halloween Challenges.

Fall
also brings parent-teacher conferences and report cards. In my district, we
have started Student-Led Conferences. I had mixed feeling about these at first
but now I see how much ownership my students take about their work! I guess
that is the point! Check out this
digital resource that makes my life much easier.

Student-Led Conferences Digital Resource

It
gives students a way to organize their conversations about their work.

Slime & STEM

A fun way to introduce the Phases of Matter was with SLIME! Yes, I said slime. I know all the kids are into it, so why fight
it!! Glue is cheap at the beginning of school and your kids will think you are
the coolest. The secret to making it not stick to you is the eye contact solution.
It is a MUST!! It is so engaging and my students came up with reasons they
thought SLIME was a solid or a liquid. It was so fun hearing them give their reasons. Isn’t that what learning is about? Having
fun, making observations, and engaging students!!!! Click here to see my SLIME Packet!

I guess reviewing all these activities might be why I have been a little tired!! Have
a great week!!

Make sure you are following my FACEBOOK and Instagram Accounts to see the fun, some fails, and always the adventures in teaching!!!

First Week of School Easy Activities

What a Great 1st Week of School

What a great week of learning. One of our favorite Easy STEM projects was building Pencil Towers. Students learned the importance of working together to complete a task. Students design, engineered, and constructed pencil towers.

Only at the beginning of the year would we have enough pencils for everyone to do this activity at once. If you want to checkout these activities click here!

*Next time we will start the towers on the floor! Always learning!

Our Quote of the Week:

Our Word of the Week: Effort

What a great week!!! There is no tired like teacher tired!!! #B2S2017

Classroom Update with a Free Printout for Open House

STEM
Station

Organization is the key in making STEM activities easier!

· Students can get their
materials and clean up when materials are clearly labeled and easy to access.

· Key items to have in
your STEM cart: cardboard paper rolls, marbles, paperclips, cups, tape, craft
sticks, string, cotton balls, straws, rubber bands, toothpicks, ping pong
balls, cards, index cards, pipe cleaners, balloons, modeling clay, spoons,
& lids.

· Check out the labels
HERE!

Chalkboard
Display boards: I don’t always like how my handwriting looks, so I print out
quotes to display on the boards. I glued
a clothespin and ribbon to the boards to dress them up a little.

Get Ready of Open House!

Click
here for a FREE Printout!

Back to School: Classroom Decorations Work in Progress

Classroom
Decorations

Getting
my classroom, student ready!! This is my favorite part of the year, looking for
items that will fit perfectly into my classroom. It’s like a hunt to find the right things
that will help with organization but also create the best learning environment
for my students. Since we spend a huge
chunk of our time there, I want it to make my students feel more at home!

The
first thing I did this year was to think about my color choices. I’ve had pinks, purples, and other bright colors
in the past. I love those colors, but I’m a little tired of them. I wanted to change things up a bit this
year. I took out all of the pink and
purple and went with more fiesta colors.
(Orange, red, green, and blue)

I
started with material for my curtains, which I found some on Amazon. My sweet mother in-law made my curtains and
covered my two hot pink chairs.

So
fun!!!

I still have a ways to go on this area! I will post pictures as soon as it’s finished!

Flexible Seating:

I
love giving students options about where they get to sit during “Work Time.” I have fourteen additional places around the
room, besides their desks. I have two
rocking chairs, two director’s chairs, four seats at the big back table, four
chairs at the chalkboard table, & two chairs at the small black table. One of my favorite finds this summer was these
bright fun chairs from Wayfair to go with my chalkboard table. This is a great place
for students to work together on projects or to peer edit and conference about
writing.

Bulletin
Boards:

My Family Bulletin
Board
is a great way to make my students feel connected to our classroom and it helps
start our classroom community. Reading, Math, & Writing Anchor Charts
Bulletin Board helps keep the most current anchor charts up in front of my
students. It also helps me stay
organized! Welcome Stars Bulletin Board
is a great beginning of the year board which soon gets converted to my Goal
Setting Board.

Reading Center:

My
favorite place in my room! I love books and I want my students excited about
reading too! I have my chapter books
organized by authors last name. I also have my books leveled on their spines.
This makes it easy for students to pick a book that is on their “Just Right”
level. I have my picture books organized
by topics and my graphic novels on the book rack.

My rug is being washed now! I will post pictures when finished!

STEM Supplies:

My
second favorite place in my room is my STEM Station. This is a life saver whenever it comes to
doing regular STEM projects. Having my bins labeled gives my students the
opportunity to know what materials are available to use while doing projects.
It also makes clean up so much easier!

5 End of the Year Activities

5 End of
the Year Activities

Wow! Another year is about to end. I’m so tired, but I want to leave my students
with activities they will remember. It’s
also important to keep students actively engaged until the end. So here is a
few of my favorite “End of the Year Activities!”

5.
STEM Paper Airplane Challenge is a collection of activities where
students create paper airplanes for different purposes. Your students will love the last days of your
class designing, creating, engineering, predicting, and testing their creations.
Students will problem solve and think critically as they complete their
airplane challenges.

4.Foil Academy Awards: Students make tin
foil awards and vote for their classmates for the awards. Student Choice Awards!! So fun and the
students love designing them.

3.
End of the Year Memory Books: A great
keepsake for your students. Students
will love writing about all their experiences from the year.

2. STEM Raft Challenge: Building a Raft is
a STEM activity where students design, create, engineer, predict, and test
their rafts. (This is a FREE Lesson)

1. WaterBottle Flipping: Students love to flip water bottles, so why not turn it into a
lesson they won’t soon forget. It’s a
great outside activity that your students will love!