Make Tissue Paper Hot Air Balloons in your Maker Space!

Thanks to Scholaris Gifted Academy for featuring us in their newsletter! Here is an excerpt on our tissue paper hot air balloons. We love this hands on project that requires so few (and inexpensive) materials. It's a perfect project for a Maker Space in your classroom.

Launching our tissue paper hot air balloons at Scholaris Gifted Academy!
That's me next to the torch that heats the air.

"During The Science of Gases students experimented with gases using, among other items, chemicals, liquid nitrogen, ping pong balls, and balloons. It was wonderful to see students discover the excitement of learning through hands on activities. In Imagine, Construct, and FLY!students designed, built, and flew hot air balloons using tissue paper and propane gas. They also constructed and launched bottle rockets and air pressure rockets. Distance was measured so that our scientists could go back to the work room and make any necessary changes to their rocket to increase speed and distance. It was amazing to see the students engage in these projects with overwhelming enthusiasm and creativity."

Aquaponics in the Classroom

One of our biggest challenges was starting our aquaponics program in the Makers Lab. Our tilapia have stabilized and are growing well. We are growing broccoli, but unfortunately, it is not growing as well as we had hoped at this point.

We will continue to tweak our methods to see if we can get some fresh school-grown veggies!

Cardboard & Duct Tape Boats

Earlier this fall we enjoyed designing these cardboard and duct tape boats in our Makers Lab. We even had a race and put the boats to test in Friess Lake!

We were honored to be featured in the West Bend Daily News.

Monarch Butterfly Fun

My grandson held still just long enough for a Monarch to land!

Did you know that you can grow your own Monarch butterflies? I recently had a friend who showed me how. I think it is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the butterfly life cycle in the classroom. Not only is it educational, it's hands-on and really amazing to see the transformation from egg to adult butterfly!

Check out my new learning guide to Growing Monarch Butterflies in your Classroom!

Rockets in your Classroom

Just in! We have brand spanking new product posted at our TPT Store. This Brain Brigade Learning Guide to Rockets will introduce your students to rockets right inside of your classroom.

The guide will give you and your students a discussion of Newton's Third Law of Motion, detailed directions on a variety of rockets for your students to build (plus templates to use!), and a Saturn V scale drawing activity. Launching rockets are one of my favorite classroom activities that I have been doing for many, many years. Students learn general science while also having a blast!

I also linked up to an awesome Teacher Tuesday blog chock full of resources - stop by Late Night Coffee to see some of the fun resources incredible teachers are dreaming up and sharing. I'm encouraged and inspired after perusing many of their ideas!

Pi Day!

Measuring diameter.

My class discovered the value of Pi by measuring the diameter and the circumference of a number of circular objects. We then divided the circumference by the diameter and got close to Pi in every instance.

We used 5-quart ice cream covers, soft drink covers, Lego tires of various sizes, and cardboard pizza rounds, and various other circles.

One student asked, "Does this work with every circle? Would it work with the size of the earth?"

We googled the diameter and circumference of the Earth and divided them.

Our results?

3.14!

After that we celebrated with cherry pie and whipped cream!

Circumference.

Survivor-Students



Breakfast on our fire that we started with flint and steel.

My fifth grade students studied books on survival during January and February. We read Hatchet, Brian's Winter, Call It Courage, and Frozen Stiff. Based on our research of survival skills and knowledge gleaned from the books we planned a "Survival Night" out on the prairie.

Last weekend we built our shelter, cooked over a campfire, and gathered firewood. The temp was about 38 during the day and dropped to 20 at night.

We took away some valuable lessons! We were warm enough when our fire was going but did not have enough wood to last the entire night. We also should have set up our shelter on snow, not concrete.

Looks like we have some work to do before starring on Survivorman!

The kids had a great time and said they would do it again. I'd call that a success!

We built our shelter next to the fire to capture heat.