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.  

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

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.