Five for Friday

Happy Friday! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday! It's been a fun week in 3rd grade so here's some of the highlights from the week. 

I've been battling a cold and on Tuesday I completely lost my voice. This was a problem because I ha to introduce the distributive property the next day... only one of the trickiest 3rd grade concepts! Luckily I had planned on teaching it with a ninja theme, so we took a ninja vow of silence and boy did these kids get into it!

I first introduced it with drawing equal groups and "slashing" those groups into two smaller groups. This seemed to work better than slashing the arrays for us. 

 

We made little ninjas to hang in the hall showing the distributive property without picture support the next day!

We also couldn't be ninjas without headbands (black cloth from walmart cut into strips) and ninja star erasers! I'm so proud of my little ninjas in training!

All week we have been preparing for our Math & Science night at school. Each table group made a science fair project board showing how we've been using STEM bins in our classroom! The Stem bins are from Brook Brown and you can check them out here!

 

After students built different designs from the challenge cards they responded to prompts about what their challenges were using different building materials and what they would try next time. I highly suggest these STEM bins for a fun way to integrate STEM in your classroom! We plan on using them at least once a week or every other week.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner so next week we'll be doing this Thanksgiving Division activity! I finally finished it for TPT and added worksheets to go along with the activity. Included is clipart of food to practice the concept of division by sharing the food over several plates. After a few rounds students start to see the pattern of how it's multiplication flipped, and they get faster! I added the worksheet so after the activity I can check for understanding without the hands-on portion.

Check out the product here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Thanksgiving-Division-2871812

Are you a lularoe addict? I admit I have a problem. Such a problem that I even blogged about all the ways teachers can wear lularoe here

This is a new style called Carly and I'm loving it! I had to take a quick pic and share the lulalove.

Farm update- Meet Captain Hook!

Captain Hook is the dad to Indie, the baby we had this past summer. He's a handsome fella and we're hoping for more beautiful kids to come. He's just staying for a month... or maybe forever. I'll see how my talk with hubby goes :)

That's all folks, thanks for stopping by! Hope you have a great and relaxing weekend. Short week next week- we can make it!

Rock on,

Diana

Reindeer Race! A forces and motion experiment!

When faced with the impossible feat of teaching an actual science lesson days before break, just bring in the reindeer! "Real reindeer?!?!" a student asked... no.. I'm not that good ha! We had a lot of fun with this experiment today though and explored how force affects distance and how gravity can affect motion.

Our first experiment was to race three reindeer going at different inclines. One reindeer was going up, another was going straight or level, and the final reindeer was going downwards. Before the buzzer sounded, we discussed which one we think might win and go the farthest. Most students felt it would be the reindeer going down, because it's easier going downhill. We just couldn't explain why, not yet anyway.

The race began and guess what?! That reindeer going down hill went about 5 inches.. WHAT?! I'm frantically thinking "oh great, a dud". We tried it again.. same result!! This just can't be right though, we really thought he would win! But wait, I notice the straw we used had the ridges on it from where it can bend. I bring this to my students attention and something amazing happened. One kiddo piped in, "Those ridges probably made more friction because it's not as smooth and slowed it down!" Oh friends, I could have cried. YES! I THINK YOU'RE RIGHT!! So we switched out the straw and it worked like a charm. We had a good talk about how scientists and even teachers (whahhhht?) can make mistakes. The beautiful thing is we learned something neat from our mistake.

The next experiment was to blow up balloons at three different sizes- small, medium, and large. The string this time all stayed level. We let the reindeer race again and measured the distance each one traveled. Students then paired up with a partner to discuss how the bigger balloon had more force to push the reindeer down the string.

To reflect on what we learned from the experiments students answered a writing prompt using their conclusions from their experiment recording sheets. These kiddos were so engaged and curious, they wanted to know what would happen if we made some of the balloons heavier than the others or filled some with water. I love to see their little gears turning!

If you'd like to try out these experiments with your class you can check out my product here. It also includes interactive notebook flaps and graphs the students can complete with their observations. I wish we had the time to graph our results! Time just flew by as we did our reindeer races :)

Click HERE for the link!

Merry Christmas! & rock on,

Diana