Space....time to switch gears!

All summer I have been working on science centers based on animals.  I have created or tweaked ideas using owls, eagles, bears, raccoons, as well as deer.   Now I am ready to switch gears and start getting ready for the school year.  This year I am starting with SPACE! 

Why? It is engaging, it is interesting and it is in the NEWS.  Last night, the NASA Curiosity mission made a successful landing of a Mars Rover on Mars.  How cool is that?? Real scientists using real tools to learn something new....Wow...


 Truthfully...I had no idea this was going on.  However, my friends at FOSS put an update on their facebook status.  With a little research, I was able to find out a few things.  Looking for a great clip to show your students about the landing?  Here it is....

Now looking for a fun clip?  Here's one to "Call me Maybe....".  Yes..everyone is doing it!  Even NASA!

And then if you are looking for uptodate and real photographs, you can always check out NASA's website!

This week I will be working on some ideas for science inquiry centers based on the planets and the moon.  Keep checking in...

Class Theme to start the year

I have debated between turtles and space all summer...I love my turtle and so do the kids. I had thought....Slow and Steady wins the race.... but today...I definitely settled on space.

 First of all...it is the first science unit we will teach this year.  It hooks the students and gets them excited about school.  We had even made up this cute bulletin board that I found last summer from Clutter Free Classroom.  She had found it from this link for bulletin board design.




We also have these blow up planets and Mrs. Fultz had a great idea I saw on Pinterest.. I could do that!





Second...I found a bunch of stuff at TARGET!

I was wasting time while waiting for a ZPak prescription (yes, I have an upper respiratory infection in the SUMMER...not fair!)...and I happened across this:

It was a bulletin board set with the planets and rockets..for $2.50.

Next I found....rocket & planet shapes (for $2) as well as window clings ($2).  They were all in primary colors which are the colors I use year round in my class.  I also found my $1 spot pocket charts in red, green, & blue as well as cute hanging pompoms and a banner in the party section.

Yesterday I had found a great picture on pinterest using these shapes for a Wonder Spot.  I found these at the $1 spot and bought four of them..I intend to use them for what do you wonder about math? reading? social studies? science?

Kids can write on them when they have a wonder and we can use them all year long!

So...space it is!  Looking forward to setting up my classroom in a few weeks.

Apollo Moon Missions

Have you ever really stopped to think about the first men on the moon?  It's pretty cool to think about what happened 43 years ago in 1969....

NASA eclips is a great place to find video clips that are research based and not fake! Yes, I spent a while googling Apollo moon landing on YouTube to find a bunch of ....well, junk. 

However, this clip is amazing!  It was actually made for high school students, but I found it very friendly for 4th/5th graders.  The clip is called History in the Making. 

Once you get the kids hooked on the Apollo mission, then you may want to continue on with future moon exploration videos. 

I recommend:  Nasa's new moon robot  to learn more about the future of moon exploration as well as Nasa's Lunar Habitat Structure.

Just looking for a good video clip on the moon?  I recommend Our World:  The Moon.  There is so much more to search for on the NASA website...I only wish I had the time to use it all!

Scale Models of the Solar System

A few days back, I had a request to share with ya'll how I show scale models of the solar system.  Once again, Seeds of Science has an excellent model that I loved.  In the program, they have a printed sheet with the sun and the planets scaled down to be shown at 10 billion times smaller than the actual size.  (Imagine that!)   Unfortunately, it is copy written and I can not share it for free with you guys.  Sorry!

However, I can tell you what we do....We went outside with a our picture cards.

This is the sun.  I asked a student holding Mercury to go where he thinks he should be near the sun.  The students automatically thought they should be right on top of the sun. In truth, the student needed to be about 6 meters away from the sun.  Next, Venus was about 11 meters away from the sun.  Earth was 15 meters away from the sun and Mars was 23 meters away.

Wow...the next planet is Jupiter and that is 50+meters away...too far away to show outside in our school yard.  In fact, we discussed that Jupiter would be all the way past the parking lot and into the soccer field.  That's a far distance in our world!

We couldn't even wrap our heads around where Pluto would be!!  This is a great way to show students the distances and the cards they held showed the scaled size.

Now speaking of scaled size....

I don't know if you have seen the Scale Model of the Universe that is available on-line.  It is pretty mindboggling!  I recommend you share this with your students to see ginormous as well as minute objects in our universe.

Solar System

  Do you teach the planets?  We have just added them back into our curriculum and I am so glad that we did!  We have spent the past two weeks learning about rotation and revolution of the earth and the moon.  We also talked about the surface of both areas...we were able to compare and contrast what they looked like and felt like.  The students quickly learned that even though there are rocks, mountains and valleys like Earth - without air and water, there is little chance for life.  Astronauts must wear special suits to exist on the moon for even a short period of time. 

But what about the other planets?  We are using Seeds of Science's unit Planets and Moons which has a wonderful collection of planet trading cards.  If you do not have the kit, you can down load some from NASA here.  They are a lot larger than the ones that Seeds provides, but they do work.

The kids spent the day reading and sorting the cards - first on their own, then by size, surface features and distance from the Sun. 

It was a great way for them to learn about surface features of the inner and outer planets as well as manipulate the cards to put the planets in order from the sun. Kids like them because they are like trading cards - think Pokemon!  (Plus there are some really cool moons and asteroids included in the pack.)  By the way, I do have a really cool activity for looking at scale models that I am hoping to blog about soon.  Been tied up with State Testing....no need to say more!

Fantastic Moon resources

This week is my first state test in reading.  I know the kids are ready, but it is always a nail biter at the end.  Don't you agree??  In science we have been studying moon phases and have come across some wonderful on-line sites that I would love to share with you. 

Have you seen????  Moon Phases from the History Channel that is available on You Tube?

What about this site? Neo Kids.... This has a great drag and drop to practice labeling the phases.  Great for a smart board.  They also have several short clips that are engaging!

Seeds of Science uses this awesome simulation!  We love it... you can simulate the lunar phases with an animation while watching the moon phases on the side.

Another favorite website is the Farmer's Almanac. It has been updated to meet the needs of 21st Century learners with videos, pictures and simulations of the moon.  Enjoy it!

Earth Models

We just started our last science unit of the year:  Planets and Moons by the Lawrence Hall of Science and Seeds of Science. In case you don't know, these science curriculum units are interdisciplinary - combining reading, writing and science to make a very full program.  I love them! 

This unit starts by investigating models.  The first model the students investigate is the "Mt. Nose" model.  Using their head as a model of the Earth, they explore what happens to Mt. Nose when the sphere is rotating.  The students stand in a circle and face a light bulb (we use our lamp with out the lampshade).  As we rotate we notice that our mountain is in full sunlight, sunset, full darkness, and sunrise.  The students learn that rotating just means spinning.

Next we introduce the model of an inflatable globe.  The students work to label four points across the earth (Hawaii, Thailand, Egypt and Florida).  Then we observe what happens when those models rotate.  They also look for day vs. night.  The students work together to compare the two models to the real Earth.  What is the same? What is different? 

They really did an nice job at noticing the differences between a globe and the real Earth.  We did the same thing with the moon's rotation - first looking at a paper pattern showing the phases and then using a Styrofoam ball to model the phases.  The greatest part is the computer simulation that shows the day/night connection along with the moon phases. 

Love it!