Force and Motion + Teacher Clothes: Black and White Striped Dress

Now that MAP is over, we're back to full-force science time! We're working on forces and motion, and today we spent some time studying Newton's second law  ... {that's the one that says extra force means extra motion}. What better way to study small vs. big forces than use Pop pom Poppers?! 

This was the simplest thing to set up - I used red Dixie cups (other kinds weren't sturdy enough), cut the ends off balloons, and put the balloons over the top of the cup. Then I cut out the bottoms. We pulled back just a bit for a "small" force and more for a "big" force. Then 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ... LAUNCH!  

We (of course) measured and record our Pom pom "pops" ... and it was a great time to work in some non-standard vs. standard measurement. 

Tomorrow we're headed out on a SKATING field trip to learn about friction ... #mybootywillbesore #hashtags4life 

While I'm updating ... teacher clothes! I'm determined that after two off weeks, I'm going to get up in time to actually feel GREAT about my teacher clothes this week. I kicked off Ms. BBZ 2.0 with this new Target maxi {#loveamaxi} and a sock bun {whoop whoop!}. I have a serious black and white obsession. 

Since it's SUPER rare for me to show my face, I decided to keep it classy for ya and leave off the arrows and sources. The dress is from Target and the cardi is from LOFT. The necklace is a Chan Luu necklace that Mr. BBZ bought me for Christmas ... #lovehim. 

We have to talk about that sock bun though ... I'm seriously channeling a little Library Dragon, don't you think? 

Not gonna lie ... I love children's literature. Okay, that's probably enough geekery for tonight. Don't forget about the sweet sale over at my store {and many others} on TpT and our last day of the MEGA giveaway! 

Thanks Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs for the graphic! 

Exploring the Moon's Characteristics

We've just completed a really fun unit - as you saw in my community sharing post, we've just wrapped up our space unit. As a teacher, some of the *best* weeks/months in the classroom are times when I'm able to integrate all our learning together into one integrated unit. Thanks gosh for inspiration late in the evening one Saturday night. {You know those nights you lay in bed, and can't shut off your brain?} Moon misconceptions!

I set it up with my kids by telling them something horrible happened! We were attacked by an awful moon monster, spreading TEN vicious rumors about the moon - things like, "The moon is made of cheese,"  "There is a man in the moon," "The moon changes shape in the sky." Can you believe it? They are precious, and love play-acting like this. 

Lucky for us we had several non-fiction reading articles, math measurement experiments, and science experiments to help us fight this ruthless rumor-mongerer.  ;)  Two of the activities we did were "the man in the moon" article reading and math craftivity to prove there's nobody living there and a "moon bounce" experiment to prove the gravity on the moon ...

We also did some pretty fun other things -- read other non-fiction articles, completed experiments, even made our own sweet moon model treat!

Moon experiment to explore phases of the moon. 

Ebbinghaus illusion - the reason the moon looks bigger than the stars around it.

Ingredients set up for our creation of our very own moon model made from crispy rice treats. :)  

Completed moon layers! YUM! 

It was a smashing success, and something I'm pretty excited to continue when we learn about energy and forces in motion this upcoming week. I guess there's always a chance this rumor monster could return ... ;)

If you're interested in completing the man in the moon and moon bouncing activity with your kids, you can find them here at my TpT store,  but the best deal is the full "moon misconceptions" unit that includes those two activities, plus our fact and fiction pre- and post- test sort, along with all the correlating activities to dispel the TEN rumors that horrible moon monster put into the world {it's a huge unit - 60 pages full of moon fun!!}.

Happy learning!

The Man in the Moon

I am LOVING learning about space! Especially the moon, because it seems like everything can be related to the moon. One thing I struggle to teach is non-fiction reading and strategies, specifically those in articles, primarily because the articles I find are usually either a) too easy b) too hard or c) too boring c) not appropriate for second graders.

SOooooOO ... I wrote my own! Seriously I don't know why I didn't do this sooner. So silly - I can tailor the "article" to teach any subject matter I want AND I can add or take away challenging vocabulary and text structures. Plus it takes WAY less time than searching the Internet Machine {my best friend calls it that and makes me giggle every time}.

I projected the article for the whole-group debrief.

Above is our anchor chart for summarizing fiction vs. summarizing non-fiction. We have two options when summarizing non-fiction - answering the "5 Ws and H" or using the main idea and several details. {I'm partial to the main idea and details option ... }

After that little brainstorm, I kept thinking - why not integrate our math time? We needed more measurement practice, so VOILA! The Man in the Moon unit was born.


We studied the rumor ... read the article, found cause and effect, main idea of each paragraph and then summarized. Then we created our own moon men using rulers and good old fashioned team work {never hurts}. I love the results!

Face options for the moon men.

I didn't get a completed picture - so sad! 

 

Moon Bouncing

We just started learning about the moon a few weeks ago, and this week I hit upon an idea that has been SO fun. We began fighting an epic battle against the MOON MONSTER! :) The Moon Monster is an evil rumor- spreader who wants to tarnish the moon's good name. If you're interested in buying this activity, purchase here. 

So ... we sorted the fact from the fiction {at least, what we thought was the fact and fiction}. This sort is part of a larger moon rumors unit I'm working on, but for now the bouncing activity is up and ready on TpT!





















And ... jumped right into {literally} as we fought to show the moon DOES have gravity {contrary to popular opinion}.

We moon bounced, and then did several follow up activities tied to our mathematics unit - we first measured the length of our jumps (some groups measured to the nearest inch, some to the nearest half and inch, and some to the nearest fourth of an inch), then added up our measurements to find the total. This gave us valuable practice adding with expanded form, some pre-teaching of adding fractions and converting measurements from inches to feet.





Don't you love it when something you've planned builds on many more skills than you initially planned? I was happy with integrating math and science, but MAN - when we started adding fractions and practicing converting those 16 inches to feet + inches .... my teaching heart SANG. :)

Finally - some of us used multiplication to practice finding out how far we would have bounced (3x the distance), and an imaginary planet where the gravity is 22x weaker than Earth!











By the time we were done, one of my sweet boys gave me the ultimate compliment - "This was math?!" Misson: accomplished. :)