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Green Screen Fun

I am starting to set up my classroom and I am torn between crying that summer is almost over or being excited to meet my new set of kids. Give me a few days as my room gets closer to being ready, I am sure the excitement will win over. 

In the meantime I have been playing with a green screen I bought and an ap I got through iTunes.  What a blast. I was spending time with some neighbor cuties and we had a great time making it look like we were in Disneyworld, Paris, the tropical ocean, and surfing Hawaii. My mind is working overtime trying to think about how I can use this at school. Here I am pretending to take our Yorkie on a sunset surf. 

If you haven't seen a green screen before, you take someone's picture in front of green fabric, select a photo, and the ap puts the person in front of your selected background. It takes all the work out of Photoshop. 

If you can find someone who has one, give it a try. I predict you will be hooked!

Physical Science, Sticky Gooey Oobleck, and a Freebie!!!

I have been hard at work on a set of activities for 2nd Grade physical science.  FINALLY I am done!!  I can't wait to use these with my kiddos this fall.  Here is a peek.

We do a lot of work identifying the properties of various objects and especially focus on solids and liquids.  To help us with that, we spend some time getting sticky and messy with Oobleck.  What fun!  My son could not leave it alone - and he is 13!  Here are some pictures.

So you got a special sneak peek at one of the investigations!  There are a total of 8!  The set also comes with 10 notebooking pages, questions, journal prompts, and answer keys.  

If that is not enough, I just added one of the 8 investigations on my TPT site as a FREEBIE!  Check it out!

Ginger

Engineering Challenge: "Fetch, Dog, Fetch"

I told you I was working on a project to provide an engineering challenge in the classroom for grades 1-6. First, I was inspired by these two...

Linus (left) and Lucy (right)

Notice the balls in their mouths - they are now, and always, ready to play fetch.  Of course, they have no idea about the other things people need to do or why we should not be throwing the ball ALL THE TIME for them.

Then I saw this video on YouTube.  Boy was I inspired.  

It is, of course, too difficult to do in the average elementary classroom but could we do something more simple? Yes!

And even more simple...

All these ideas combined to inspire me to create an easily differentiated classroom engineering challenge that supports our Next Generation Science Standards.  In it, students complete either the basic or advanced challenge.  In the basic challenge, students create a tool that will help to throw a ball farther for a dog (and possibly create fun and fatigue for the dog).  In the advanced challenge, students create a machine that enables the dog to play fetch by himself.  

This unit contains a background story for the challenge (with real photos of Linus and Lucy), pictures of tools or machines that might inspire some creativity in your students, detailed teacher instructions, a parent letter, and journal pages for an interactive notebook.  It is available now in my TPT Store.  I hope you check it out.  Don't forget to follow my store as I post more elementary science and engineering activities to support the NGSS.

Engineering in the Classroom

I am currently hard at work on a new project for my TPT Store.  I am so excited because it is designed to meet the engineering requirements in our new Next Generation Science Standards.  I have been doing engineering activities in my classroom for the past two years.  First, I am a sucker for engineering.  Second, my students love love love them.  But really, I have been doing them because of my involvement in Science Olympiad and what is great for my team winds up getting shared in my classroom.

This past year we did a Rube Goldberg activity and it was the talk of the school.  I can't wait to do another.  Here is a video of one of my favorite shows, "Elementary," and their amazing Rube Goldberg style intro.  Watch it and see if you can catch some engineering fever!

Happy Fourth of July

I hope you are having a great weekend celebrating with friends and family. We are at the beach for the weekend and saw some spectacular shows over the water.

I am enjoying the sun and cool breezes. Yes! Quite a change from home. 

Yes, that is an ocean view <<smile>>.

In between hanging out on the deck and watching soccer, I am working on some new science and engineering lessons to post this week!

Enjoy your weekend. It is just about time for me to help with the barbeque.

Heat! Heat! Go away!

Ok.  It is just plain hot in Central California today.  My husband and I took our kids to Oregon last week and had a fabulous time.  We loved it!  The weather was amazing.  The view was spectacular.  The people were great; not to mention all the good places to eat and drink.  Just look at Multnomah Falls and you will see why we fell in love.

I digress.  The point is, we got used to the cooler weather and now we are DYING.

So, what better way to stay cool than to sit in the air conditioning in the afternoon and work on science activities.  I am really excited thinking about the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards.  It is so great that even engineering is included!  Here is the newest addition to my TPT store...

Please take a minute to check it out.  Follow my store and you will see when I post all the new stuff I will be creating as I sit here hiding from the heat!  

Have a great day!

Ginger

Task Cards! Life Cycle of a Plant

I am excited to try something new.  I have seen a lot of ideas for how to use task cards.  Some of my favorites were here.  This year, I am planning on making a wall of task card sets for early finishers to use.  My area is not yet named.  If you have ideas, please let me know.  My plan is that students will study the task cards and then take the quiz on them as they have extra time.  This may not exactly coincide with then we are working on the topic in class but a little review is a good thing.  When they pass the test with 100%, they get a bead on a necklace which they keep at the end of the year.

These task cards are for our life science, focusing on the plant life cycle.  I am so excited to have finished.  Maybe they will be useful for you too.  They are available in my TPT store. They can be adapted to work with younger students but are perfect for 2nd through 4th graders.

Add some science in your day and give these a try.

Ginger

Welcome Sci-Fries!

It has been an exciting day!  Sci-Fries has been born today.  I love to teach science, both in the classroom and after school through Science Olympiad.  I hear all the time that teachers don't have enough experience or materials for science instruction so here goes...Sci-Fries to the rescue.  Today I posted my first item on TPT (it's free).

What do plants need to live?

I am a strong believer in science journals.  The more students connect language and writing to science education, the better they will understand their science learning.  Of course there are huge reasons to connect science and language arts from a Common Core perspective as well.

I hope you will stick around and follow my blog as I introduce more science materials.  Some might just be right up your alley as well!

Ginger