Camp Think Tank

It's the first week of summer so why am I still teaching?  Because it's CAMP THINK TANK time.  Camp Think Tank is a week long summer camp for the Gifted and Talented kids grades 4-6 in Crowley.  The kids rotated through three classes of their choosing and created an end project to show the parents.  Below you will find the video created by Tammy Martinez to showcase all the kids hard work. 

I chose to teach technology.  Of course most of my class ended up being boys, but the girls created some pretty fantastic things too.  One boy, as we were walking to class on our first day told me he was "pretty much a hacker" and that he could help anyone that needed help in the class.  Well, in this class we created our own video games using the app from Pixel Press Floors.  The kids sketch out what they want their game to look like and then scanned it into an i pad and after choosing the characters, backgrounds, and hazards, their game was complete. 

Forces and Motion

Our theme this year for my 3rd and 4th grade students is FORCES.  It's hard to talk about forces without mentioning Sir Isaac Newton.  We studied each of his laws and conducted experiments for each.  The kids had a blast!

Newton's First Law:

I found a great video and Newton's law challenge from the Children's Museum of Houston.  The challenge was to stack a 15 pennies, then a playing card, then a five more pennies and see if you could get all the pennies on top of one another without letting them fall.  The kids tried so hard and you could see the wheels turning in their heads on how to not let the pennies fall.

Newton's Second Law: 

For the second law we made pom pom poppers and the kids created their own marble experiments to show force= mass x acceleration.  

Newton's Third Law:

The kids used marbles to show that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  One marble flicked into 2-3 others will only move one marble- not all of them.  

Another great experiment we did with Newton's Third Law was to build a balloon rocket car.  We found the instructions on youtube and built some really great cars.  

Kagu

The Kagu is a rare flightless bird that is also known as the Ghost of the Forest.  These birds live in the rain forests of New Caledonia and eat a variety of foods such as: larvae, spiders, centipedes, bugs, cockroaches, millipedes, beetles, snails, worms and lizards.  Kagus have skin flaps called corns, which cover the nostril and may keep dirt from entering the nose when the bird digs with it's bill.  They are the only bird that have this. This beautiful bird has white feathers and gray stripes that can only be seen when the feathers are outstretched.  The Kagu feathers were so prized by the makers of ladies' fancy hats that in the 1800's they almost became extinct.  

After learning about the Kagu the kids made their own Kagu out of a paper plate.

 

The Living Museum

The third and fourth graders have worked so hard on their biographies of a famous person.  We put them together for a Living Museum presentation.  The kids dressed up as their famous person, brought items to help explain what contributions their person made and gave a speech.  What an amazing job they did.  Here are some pictures of our creative kids!

Dominique Moceaneau

Barack Obama

Frida Kahlo

Zendaya

Oprah Winfrey

Shakespeare

Happy Horned Toads

This week we talked about one of my favorite animals.  Ok, so maybe it is just my favorite because I went to TCU and it is their mascot.  The Horned Toad, or horned frog as TCU calls them.  The horned frog is not a frog at all it is actually a reptile.  This reptile has a flat body and can be quite fierce looking with all of it's horns.  The horned toad is found in open, rocky areas with little plants.  In fact, the horned toad requires warm temperatures to stimulate it's appetite and activity. They sometimes begin their day by exposing only their head to sunlight while keeping their body buried.  Later they will be seen in a flattened body posture sunning themselves in open areas.  They are not active at night or when temperatures fall below 75 degrees F.  They are seen mainly in the late spring through early fall and hibernate a few inches underground.
One special defense that the horned toad has it it's ability to spit blood at it's predators.  It can shoot blood from it's eyes up to six feet away.  This is not harmful to the animals, but it is distasteful and stuns the predators giving the horned toad time to escape.  See the cool video here:

A clever book that is a twist on the fairy tale The Frog Prince is called The Horned Toad Prince.  We read this book after we learned all about the horned toad.  I teach a combination of English and Spanish speakers and my Spanish speakers loved to help me with the Spanish words in the book.

  Afterwards, we made horned toad art and masks to wear.  

 

Platypus

Our next animal is a little unusual.  It has the bill like a duck, the tail like a beaver, the body like an otter, walks like a reptile, and lays eggs.  What is it you ask?  A Platypus.  Most of my students had heard of a platypus but were thrilled to learn more about these unusual creatures.  We learned what they eat and how they live and how they take care of their young.  Our favorite videos about the platypus we found on YouTube.  We found the platypus song addicting.  The kids kept asking me to play it again, and again, and AGAIN!  I'll be singing it for days! 

Our platypus art this week included making our own platypus with one fact they learned. 

Zebra

Our first and second graders are learning about unusual animals to prepare for their big research projects.  We started off with the zebra.  We compared the zebra stripes to our own fingerprints.  Each zebra has a unique set of stripes just like our fingerprints are unique to us.  We looked at the three types of fingerprints: the arch, the whorl and the loop, and classified our own prints. 

The kids tried to think of other animals that have unique coats like the zebra.  Can you think of any?


After we learned some fascinating facts about the zebra we read a clever book called "A is for Zebra".  The kids all had puzzled looks on their faces.  "Wait!  Z is for Zebra!"  Once we started reading our book they quickly learned why A is for Zebra.  This book uses the last letter of the word instead of the first.  We went through the whole alphabet and found many things in the pictures that ended with each letter. 

Our animal lesson wouldn't be complete without doing a fun art activity.  The kids cut out blank zebras (with no stripes).  We used marbles to paint the stripes on our zebras. What fun it is to roll the marbles around all over.  Some got more paint on the box than they got on the zebra, but that is part of the fun.  Here are our finished products.

Augmented reality

This has to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  The students color a picture and it magically comes to life with the app called ColAR Mix.  So you go from a picture like this:

To a picture like this: 

The kids can touch the screen and the zebra will move.  Touch different parts of the zebra and it will do different things.  AMAZING!  

Biography Project

My kids have been working for months on their biography projects.  Each one picked a person that has made an impact on our world.  The chosen people range from athletes, to singers, to presidents and scientists and everything in between.  The kids have researched facts on their person and will even dress like that person for their final presentations.   So what better way to showcase their hard work- BACKGROUNDS.  The kids each painted their own mural of sorts for a backdrop for their final presentations, a Living Museum.  Here are some of my favorites.  We found clipart on the internet, traced them on butcher paper and the kids had a blast painting them all.


                                                                     Rosa Parks

Frida Kahlo

Stan Lee

Michael Jordan

Abraham Lincoln

Christmas Around the World

How do you celebrate Christmas?  Do you think people celebrate differently in different parts of the world?  My third and fourth grade students decided to find out.  I found this great foldable activity from Teachers Pay Teachers Holidays Around the World.

All I needed was a few paper bags with the folded end snipped off.  Once folded in half it made a great book with pockets.

 I premade the books for my kids just to save some time.  The kids glued each page on to the book for each of the different countries.  Now it was time for some research.  The kids had their ipads equipped with QR Readers.  Each country had a QR code that once scanned, would take you to the different information about how they celebrated Christmas.  The kids would fill in the blanks from each page as they learned about how that country celebrated Christmas.  Each country was also equipped with an art activity.  These were small and easy but helped the kids remember what each country did to celebrate.  These art activities fit perfectly in the pockets for storage.

How Santa Got His Job

Well, the semester is almost over.  What better way to wind down than to do a few Santa activities.  We read How Santa Got His Job.  We talked about what Santa learned at each job that made him more successful.  The student's jobs right now is to be the best student they can be.  We talked about what we wanted to be when we grow up and what we could do now to help in our success later on.  The kids were encouraged to remember that we attend school to learn how to be a better worker in the future.

We also read Santa's New Suit and completed several of the writing activities included.  

TPT Santa's New Suit.  Their homework was to use their imagination and create a new suit for Santa.  

I think the kids thought the Santa Slime was their favorite though.  I found the recipe on Pinterest.  Here is the recipe we used: Santa Slime Recipe.  I had made oobleck before using white school glue but never with clear glue, or glitter glue.  

Snowmen at Night

What's more fun than watching Frozen? Reading about what snowmen do at night.  Who knew that the reason my snowman was always disheveled every morning is because he was out on the town every night?? Not only does this book have fun pictures of what the snowmen do, but on each page there are several hidden pictures.  My kids were so fascinated by the hidden pictures that I was not allowed to turn the page until we found them all!   

After reading this fun book, I let the kids watch a youtube of a funny snowman trapped in a snowglobe from Pixar.  

Trapped in a Snowglobe Snowman Video

My students also painted fun pictures of what they thought the snowmen did at night only using a Qtip.  I found this idea on pinterest.  

Once we were done, the students created borax snowflakes.  See video here: 

Borax snowflakes