What we have been up to this week... Landforms + FREEBIE!

Hi everyone!
I hope you are enjoying your weekend! Here in Texas, the weather has been CRAZYYYY!!! Temperature has dropped below the 50F, and that's too cold for this Peruvian teacher!! You would think I would be OK since I have lived in Nebraska for a year and 4 years in Maryland...However, this South American teacher got too use to of the warm Texas weather ;) We have been around the 20s and 30s in Central Texas, so consequently I have been eating soup and drinking hot chocolate!
It was raining in low temperatures yesterday, so I took some pictures of how freezing this poor city looked like!

Now, back to school!! :) We have been talking about landforms the past week during Science... We will also be working on landforms next coming week, so I'll be posting more pictures of other activities by next week...

First, we have talked about different examples: Mountains, Hills, Valleys, and Plains. We wrote the meaning of each word with examples and non-examples in our journals.

We also created a construction paper representation of each landform; here are some pictures of my students work and I've posted a picture of my master sample. I saw a picture on Pinterest (Click HERE to take you to the picture I found) and decided to make my own since I added a few more details and I included the landforms we were learning. I honestly show them how to cut their own without any pattern; However, if you would like a copy of what we did, I have posted a FREEBIE on my TPT store... I included the landform vocabulary words in Spanish AND English... click HERE to take you to the product :)

For our lab day, students were working in groups and built a sketch with play-dough. Before we started, we reviewed each landform and its characteristics. Then I advised them to use a specific color for each landform. However, I reminded them that this was their project and they had to decide as groups. I did not tell them how to make the mountains or any landforms, I basically check around if they needed more guidance and let them take ownership for their own work. They were soooo engaged and were working soooo well in groups that made this activity so smooth :)
Here are some picture of their work as they are putting it together:

On the second week of landforms, we add a little bit of sweetness to our project. I have looked on Pinterest several pins with different ideas, so I combined those ideas to make our own landform activity. We used Graham cookies, green frosting, light blue frosting, M & M, fish sprinkles, and Hershey Kisses. As the play-dough activity, I let my students decide how to create their landforms, as long as they include the landforms we have been learning about.

At the end of the week, we also compared Hills and Mountains by creating a Foldable that contained a Venn Diagram. We wrote similarities and differences in between these two landforms. Students worked in partners writing their draft on a paper and then, creating a final product on this foldable.

Hope you find these lessons helpful and you would be able to use them in your classroom as well :)
Thank you for stopping by my blog, see ya next time! Stay warm if you are in Texas or another state that have cold weather during these days! :/

Be sure to check other Freebies on TBA (Teaching Blog Addicts) for Friday August 28, 2015.

Natural Resources & Recycling Activity

We have been working very hard on problem solving during two weeks now... I honestly don't have any new activity for this, but just practice, practice, practice! We have been practicing all of our strategies and looking at some key words to identify a plan for our word problems.

On the other hand, for science we have been working on Natural Resources...
We started the unit by introducing all our vocabulary words; we usually take a class period to introduce and talk about the vocabulary words. My school has an account on Brain Pop so I also play a short video. My students LOVE LOVE Brain Pop, so I try to find videos on that website. We talked about Natural Resources, helpful products, ways to preserve our natural resources (Recycle, Reuse, and Reduce).

We read a VERY basic book about Natural Resources vs. Man-Made and this seemed to help my students to really understand about Natural Resources and products.

We also created a foldable to write examples of Natural Resources and products that come from those examples.


As our experiment we recycled paper! I found the activity on a link, click HERE to see it.

We first tore all 4 different construction paper in small pieces and mix them up on a tray.

We then place the construction paper in a blender, add water, and scorn starch and blend it all together.

 

We then, place the mix on a tray and spread it.., then, with a sponge we took all the water we possibly could take so the paper could dry faster (it took about two days to dry)...

 

These pictures show how the recycle paper look after it dried completely (it actually took more than a day, I am thinking it took so long because the paper turned out to be very thick).

 

 

 

We couldn't use these on time for our Thanksgiving Thankful cards, but we will sure use them to make some Christmas cards! (Click on Recycle under Labels to see more).

 

I hope you guys had a restful Thanksgiving! I was planning on doing lots of things, but I only slept and ate! hahaha ;)

 

I will be posting new things by the weekend again!! Thanks for stopping by my blog :)

 

Weather and Energy Activities

Hello everyone!
My post will be very short this time, I am working on a free product that I would really like to finish today so I can post it tonight or tomorrow :)
We have been working very hard on weather and weather tools... We have been talking about thermometers, wind vanes, windsocks, and rain gauges. As a lab activity, we created thermometers in our classroom.
I started looking up Google and I found the activity HERE
Here are some pictures of how they turned out; my students were very excited and engaged while creating these. We ended up running out of time, so we created a thermometer for each tables group (4 students); However, it turned out to be perfect as a group project. Each student was able to contribute by doing something in this activity. I have some students that are very outspoken, so this activity really helped them to work on heir patience and skills as a team member.

 

 

We also did our best to keep a bar graph with weather; However, with all this testing going on around, we have not been able to finish it and have a complete graph.

 

After our unit of weather, we proceeded to Energy. We started this unit by introducing some vocabulary such as energy, mechanical energy, light energy, heat/thermal energy, and sound energy.

We looked into each source of energy throughout the week.

For sound energy I did a demo on musical scales; you fill each bottle with an amount of water and add food coloring to differentiate one bottle from another. After the demo a played the Magic School Bus episode called "The Haunted museum". I love this episode because it deeply explains that sound is produced by vibration.

 

 

 

For the heat/thermal energy, we baked a "Coffee Mug Cake," HERE is the link that I used. I did this twice. My first group of students used coffee mugs, but after cooking it, we realized most of them were not mixed properly and the mugs were too small for the mix. So for my second group we switched things around. We increased the amount of the recipe so we could use the lab's equipment; we used the Mason Jars (Quart size). These jars really helped my students because they were cleared glass, so they could see the bottom of the jar and make sure it was well mixed. Also, since we increased the amounts in the recipe, we heated the mix in the microwave for 7 to 8 minutes instead of 5 minutes.

 

I found this picture on this website to help me with the jar sizes.


Here are some pictures of my students working in groups. Since last activity was such a success, we did this activity as groups, too. Each of them had a task to do and they worked even better than  last time.

 

 

The weather has not been on our side lately, we have been doing a lot of the "indoor" recess at our school. So we decided to stay in our classroom to eat our cake during recess. The students loved it and were very engaged during this activity.

 

That's all for today, I hope these activities inspired you to try them out in your classroom. I am hoping to post another page tonight or tomorrow with my freebie!

 

Have a great Saturday y'all!

 

 

Arrays, arrays, and arrays!!! PLUS Water Cycle!!!

We did a little bit of multiplication this week....
We have been having unit tests every week, whether for math or science... so I figured the kids needed a little bit of sweetness in their work...
So I picked these two books to review about arrays and talk more about multiplication:

 

 

We worked on some vocabulary words such as arrays, factors, and product. Then we read a little bit of both books, and at the end we added a little bit of fun and sweetness to our work.

 

Students received 12 Hershey Kisses to create different arrays with them, and record their arrays on their math journal. After they recorded the different arrays, I gave them a legal size of black construction paper and a sheet that contained about 25 Hershey Kisses clip art. They were working in partners to create different arrays with the amount given. At the end of the day, I let students take the chocolate home and eat them there :)

Unfortunately, I can't give you my copy because I do not have any permission from whoever did the clipart; HOWEVER, I can tell you that I just looked up on Google "Hershey Kisses coloring" and I found the one I used for this activity.

 

Here are some pictures of what my students created:

On this same week we had some minutes left to do something different.... The idea started when I saw Amy Lemons post about area, you can click HERE to go to her post. However, I used this idea differently, we create robots so we could make arrays.... here are some pictures of what my students did... I think they turned out pretty cute :)

On this same week, we have been learning about the water cycle (more of a review for 3rd graders) and each stage of it (we went in more depth to describe each stage). We created a foldable to write about each stage and we illustrated the water cycle on our journals. As an independent/assessment, students illustrated on a legal size construction paper the water cycle, and labeled each stage. I think they turned out pretty good, and I especially liked the one that had a wave.. :)

This is what we have done in a nutshell :) I am hoping my week will be smother and I will be feeling better to keep posting things.... Thank you to all that keep reading and stopping by my blog :)
I know I have not been very good at posting weekly, but I hope that you understand that even when we try, we can't control our health and that things happen in life :)
I wish you all a engaging and fun rest of a week!!