June 30, 2020

Hi Families! 

You may be looking for some more ideas to keep your kids busy at this time. I know I am always looking for ideas for my own children. Check out the cool activities at the links below. There are tons of fun STEM activities to try and you can even incorporate writing. Have your kids write down a prediction/hypothesis about what they think will happen in the activity/experiment. After they see the results of the experiment, they can write down what happened and even draw pictures/diagrams and label them. 

Hang in there! You're doing great! 

Ultimate Boredom Buster: 101 Things to Do When Kids Are Bored

32 Cool Science Experiments For Kids (that are Fun AND Easy!)

Week of May 25th, 2020

This week, I am sharing a great book about coding, or computer programming, called How To Code A Sandcastle by Josh Funk. It does a great job explaining important ideas in coding and what it means to program a computer to do something. The computer in the book is a robot who helps the girl build a sandcastle. 

How to Build a Sandcastle by Josh Funk

Here's a fun coding activity to try from coderkids.com that helps teach the idea that computers will only do what you tell them to do:

Code a Robot

1. In a fairly large space, put various objects around the area that act as obstacles that people have to move around. Have a start and end point. 
2. One person is the robot and the other is the programmer. (If you have more than two people playing, the programmers can get in a line and rotate giving directions.)
3. Programmer(s) give(s) directions to get the robot through the obstacle course without touching any of the obstacles. If an obstacle is touched, then the robot must start from the beginning. 
4. The programmer should only give one direction at a time. Example: "turn to the right and take a step" should be broken down into 2 separate steps: "turn to the right" and "take 1 step".
https://www.coderkids.com/blog/3-fun-offline-games-that-help-kids-learn-to-code

Week of May 18th, 2020

The read-aloud this week helps students understand: What IS Science? Science includes so many things and this books shows that it is all around us. 

What Is Science? by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

Science is everywhere and causes many amazing things-- including the very cool results in this activity where crystals form on an object hanging in a solution of borax and water. In this activity, they used pipe cleaners to form letters of the child's name and then hung them in the solution overnight. It does require some materials you may not ordinarily have around the house. I would like to try this with my own kids, but I will have to pick up some borax the next time I am out. Some people do, however, have this material in their households, so if you are one of those people, you may want to check this out! 

Crystal Names Activity

Week Of May 11th

Check out another great read-aloud from Brad Meltzer, creator of the cartoon Xavier Riddle & The Secret Museum on PBS Kids. This week's book is about a very inspiring scientist, Marie Curie! 

I Am Marie Curie  by Brad Meltzer

Here's a fun engineering activity to try: Build structures with toothpicks and jellybeans or you can use mini marshmallows. It's fun to see what you can create with these simple items!

Engineering with Jelly Beans Activity

Week of May 4th, 2020

Here is a read-aloud about rollercoasters! If you've ever ridden one, you might think they are pretty fun, or you might think they are scary. Let's think about this --engineers had to design them and then builders had to construct them! It's kind of amazing that people are able to build rollercoasters that make riders go super fast on a track, make them go down very steep hills, and even make them go in loops upside-down--all while keeping everyone safe! It takes a lot of science to make that happen!

Read-Aloud: Roller Coaster by Marla Frazze

If you would like to try to build a paper rollercoaster like the one shown above, below is a link to a quick video that shows you how to make one. (You can make paper tracks without using the printable template they show in the video.)

Build A Paper Roller Coaster Tutorial Video

Here is the link to the lesson plan with more details: 

Build a Paper Roller Coaster Lesson Plan 

Week of April 27th, 2020

This week's read-aloud is a book called The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds. It's about a girl who does not want to try drawing in art class. She does not believe she is an artist. With lots of  encouragement from her teacher, she tries creating something very simple. After that first little step she takes, she wants to make more art--and so she finds she actually IS an artist. Sometimes, we just need to take that first, small step towards trying something new, and it can open up a whole new, exciting world for us. 

Click here to listen to The Dot Read-Aloud 

I found this cool STEM activity you may want to try this week. You just use about 7 twigs/sticks from outside and arrange them in a way where you can hang them and they will twirl. The picture shows them wrapped in yarn for extra color, but you do not need to do that. You will need string or yarn to wrap/tie the sticks together.  If you want to read more details on how to make this mobile, click on the link below.  

Twirling Twigs Mobile

Quick Steps to Building This Mobile:

 

Remember: you can just use regular sticks--they don't need to have colored yarn wrapped around them. 

Arrange the sticks the way you want them to hang and tie them together with string. 

Add a rock if you need to, to keep the sticks straight. 

Week of April 20th, 2020

Here is another read-aloud from Brad Meltzer. It is about the female pilot, Amelia Earhart. Brad Meltzer created the Xavier Riddle & the Secret Museum cartoon that airs on PBS Kids. You may recognize some scenes from that show in his read-aloud!

I Am Amelia Earhart Read-Aloud

A simple STEM activity for this week is: Can you build something that floats in the bathtub or sink? Use any materials you have around the house: aluminum foil, cereal/cereal boxes, straws, empty plastic berry containers---anything you have! What materials work the best? Bonus activity: Can you put some pennies or other coins on it? How many can you put on it before it sinks?

Build Something That Floats Activity

Week of April 13th, 2020

Hello Students and Families! Here is a new STEM read aloud about a man named Neil Armstrong. He was an astronaut and one of the first people to ever walk on the moon! He worked hard and failed many times before he achieved his dreams. He never gave up! 


I am Neil Armstrong   by Brad Meltzer


There's also an easy exploration you can do to see which paper column shape will hold the most books? You really only need 3 pieces of paper (copy paper or construction paper). One paper is folded into a triangle shape, one folded into a circle shape (cylinder), and one in a square shape. Then slowly pile books on top of the column to see how many books you can pile up! Which shape do you think will hold the most books?

Paper Column Activity

Week of April 6th, 2020

I hope everyone had a restful Spring Break.  It was nice to get a few days of sunshine. Below is a link to the STEM read-aloud for this week. I was excited to find this one on YouTube!

Ada Twist, Scientist

I have been saving any paper towel or toilet paper rolls in my household just in case we needed them for a craft and I found this really cool activity where they can be used. You can tape them to the wall and make a marble run. If you don't have marbles, any small ball or even those little craft pom-poms will work. Kids plan out the design of where they want the marble to go and where they tape the tubes on the wall in order to make it go in a certain direction.

Make a Marble Run from Cardboard

Update: Here's a marble run I made at home. I had a few marbles, but I also wadded up some small scraps of paper and taped them so that they wouldn't come undone, and we used those to put down the "run". If you have some of those craft pom-poms, those would be really fun to use.  I also put two containers, one labeled "A" and one labeled "B", at the bottom of each tube and my 3-year-old and 6-year-old had fun figuring out which way the objects would go and which container they would fall in. Painter's tape, masking tape, or Scotch tape would work for this. Be careful with duct tape as it may take paint off the wall! 

Week of March 23, 2020


Here's a link to a read aloud about "Your Fantastic Elastic Brain: Stretch It, Shape It" by JoAnn Deak, PhD. It explains how we can keep making our brains grow throughout our lives. 


Also, here is a link to 28 days of STEM activities if you want to dig deeper into some things to do that will grow your brain!

January 2020

January has been a busy month. The first Saturday back from Winter Break, the Pattengill Robotics Club competed in the AAPS District-Wide Winter Elementary Robotics Competition at Forsythe Middle School.

We had 10 teams compete at this competition. One team received an award for sturdiest, most well-built robot at the competition and Pattengill received 1 of 3 awards for sportsmanship and enthusiasm at the competition! We also had 5 teams place in the top 20 out of 50 teams in total points scored. All of our teams showed so much growth in competitiveness and scoring points even from the first to the 4th and final match. Our girl participation in the club was up much more than last year, and they were competitive at the event, so we are making progress in that area! All of our kids did an amazing job with perseverance, problem-solving, and teamwork. It was a joy to watch. 

Our parents, families, and fans were awesome, getting the kids pumped up with spirit chants, doing the "rollercoaster" in the stands, and cheering for our kids. There was a wonderful atmosphere at the competition, and I am so glad it turned out to be so fun for the kids. (I think it's safe to say it was fun for the adults, too!)  

A big thank you to our wonderful Bryant-Pattengill PTO, who supplied the t-shirts at no cost to our kids. 

PLTW also started back up at Bryant Elementary this month, and so far, first graders have been exploring ways to make sound with different materials, including communicating to classmates with string telephones-- always super fun! Kindergarten students have been learning about what engineers do, and their first task was to build the tallest beanstalk that would stand on its own with only 10 pipe cleaners!

Building "beanstalks" in Kindergarten-- a practice in critical thinking, creativity, and perseverance!

First grade experimenting with sound at centers

                         First graders tried to hear their heart beats with a stethoscope.

                 What are the different ways we can make sound with rubber bands and a plastic cup?

                                 Fun with string telephones in the new Makerspace at Bryant