Daily Schedule Plans

I love having a daily schedule to follow. This is a general framework, of course there are lots of times that we might let one activity go long if we're having fun or I want to add in more or less of a subject for special projects.

Engineering Camp

I taught two weeks of summer camp and they were both so much fun! Here are some of the activities that we did during the first week camp I did, which was engineering camp.

On our first day of camp we learned about roller coasters! We played with marble towers, designed our own roller coasters, and planned out an amusement park.  We did an experiment where we spun water around in a cup  in circles. This led to a discussion about Newton’s Laws of Motion and centripetal force.  In the afternoon we made our own roller coasters using pipe foam, marbles, and duct tape.

The second day of camp was all about destruction, which we learned about through Humpty Dumpty themed activities.  The first activity involved putting a Humpty Dumpy paper puzzle back together using bandaids.  We then experimented with dropping eggs in bags of different materials, to see what type of material protected an egg best.  Students used those skills to build a cushion for their egg for an egg drop challenge.

We filled day three with making lots of different types of toys.  Some of the projects included a spinning top and a few different bubble wands.  We then experimented with which type of ingredients made the best type of bubble solution. We also built some towers out of noodles and marshmallows. 

Survivor was the theme for day four.  We made volcanoes out of play dough and decorated them using leaves, dirt, and sticks.  Later in the day we got to make our volcanoes explode using baking soda and vinegar.  We also saw what happened when we put Pop Rocks and vinegar in our volcanoes. Our last project of the day was making a solar oven out of a pizza box, foil, and plastic wrap.  We made s’mores in our solar ovens and talked about the power of the sun.

We had lots of fun on our last day of camp.  We made catapult paper airplanes using rubber bands and also made a paper airplane using a straw.  We measured how far our planes flew and had a paper airplane flying contest!

Last Day of School

I can't believe our last day was yesterday! We spent our last few minutes together talking about fun memories and singing and dancing to our favorite songs.  When it was time to leave, I didn't want to let them go! We did a couple things on our last half day including bucket lists and the ABC's of summer.  It was the perfect combination of being engaging and fun, they were also able to work with their friends which they loved.  Here is the link for ABC's of Summer and here are the Bucket Lists.

STEM Kit Final Project

We've been working on our STEM kit for quite awhile and today we finally tackled the ending project! The kids have been learning a little about chemical engineering and the process of making play dough.  We learned how salt, water, and flour can affect the quality of the dough.  Today, the class got to write their own recipes and create the dough themselves.  It was so fun!

We first learned about our tools...

Then we altered the recipes, put it in the order that we wanted, and picked who would do each step...

Then we followed the recipe!

It was messy and everyone had a great time!

Graduation Set Up

Here is how we set up our graduation celebration last night! We had the kids make Eric Carle style collage scenes to decorate the sides of the stage.  They picked scenes from a song we do in sign language, A Wonderful World.  They also made giant flowers and wrote what they learned and how much they grew on the leaves of the flowers.  It looked so cute and the kids did an awesome job, I really love my class!

Snap Circuit Final Project

For our final Snap Circuit project, we made a circuit to launch a flying saucer! The kids got to try and launch at targets once their circuits were complete.  We did a tally chart of our results and then drew a  diagram of what our circuits looked like. It was really fun!

My Amazing Writers

Wow, as I was going through our final books that we made this year I was so impressed! I love the amount of detail the class is putting into pictures and the detailed sentences they are writing.  Here are a couple pages from some of our books!  The hard books we publish onto can be found at Bare Books and we use colored Sharpies to write with.