Sunday, April 26, 2020

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. 



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.  




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. 

Sunday, April 19, 2020

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!



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?

Sunday, April 12, 2020


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


Monday, April 6, 2020



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!