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Monday, December 29, 2014

Anchors Away: Asking Questions

I'm linking up today with Crafting Connection's Anchors Away linky. 


Today I have an Asking Questions anchor chart to share with you!


I took some ideas from a couple different anchor charts I had pinned on Pinterest. You can check out the anchor charts I used here on my Pinterest board

Sunday, December 7, 2014

States of Matter

We just started our States of Matter Unit. I love this unit because there are so many hands-on activities that can be used! Every year I make oobleck with my students to start off a discussion on solids, liquids, and gases. We start by reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Suess and then we make oobleck. This always creates a huge mess, but the students have fun with it. All you need to create oobleck is corn starch and water. Unfortunately, throughout all the chaos of making the oobleck, I forgot to take pictures. 

As we discuss the differences between solids, liquids, and gases, we play charades to show how the molecules act in each state of matter. For solids, the students stand close together and do not move. For liquids, the students spread out a little bit and move slowly back and forth. For gases, the students spread throughout the room and move freely about. 

We also like to watch this states of matter rap!

  

I'll try to take some pictures and post more about the activities that we will be doing this week, but for now I will leave you with a link to the Matter "I have, who has" game that we will be playing at the end of this chapter to review the vocabulary terms. I just posted it on TpT  today so I will discount it at 50% for today only!


Enjoy your Sunday!





Monday, December 1, 2014

Ecosystems and Food Chains!

I was going through pictures on my phone and realized I never posted pictures from our ecosystems and food chains unit.  This is one of my favorite science units. We start the unit by discussing what an ecosystem is and then we create our own! We make a simple woodland habitat in 2-liter bottles. This year a local nursery was generous enough to donate spider plants for us to use in our project!


When we got to talking about food chains and food webs, the students created their own. The students had fun researching what animals eat in order to complete their food webs. 



To end our unit, we played our favorite "I Have, Who Has" game. We love "I Have, Who Has" games and they are a great way to review vocabulary terms. 

I Have, Who Has Ecosystems and Food Chains