Donor's Choose

I am thinking of creating a Donor's Choose project for my class. We need higher level chapter book sets to challenge our readers. Any advice from you all? What has been your experience with Donor's Choose?

Happy Friday!

Paper Airplane - The Experiment

Today, after our prep work, we let the airplanes fly! To review, we are testing which paper makes the best paper airplane: tissue, cardstock, construction, copy, and notebook. The students took their place and let them fly!

 

 

 

 

Copy paper (up to 17 ft) squeaked out a win over cardstock (up to 14 ft) with tissue paper barely going anywhere (1 ft).

Fractions - Number Line

We have upped our fraction instruction this year to prepare our students for their 4th Grade CCSS curriculum next year. Not only can my students write and recognize fractions, we are now ordering and comparing fractions. Today we put them in a number line.

I drew a blank number line and had students do the same on their whiteboards. Student came up and drew from a pile of fractions and taped it where they thought it belonged on the number line. The class voted (thumbs up/ thumbs down) if they agreed with there the student placed the fraction. Then the students explained why they placed their fraction wherever they did. I loved hearing their reasoning behind the placement. I'm excited to see them grow as fraction fanatics!

 

 

Paper Airplane - Prep Work

Today, we prepared for our Paper Airplane experiment! We are testing which paper will make the best paper airplane. The types of paper we are testing are: tissue, cardstock, construction, copy, and notebook. Because we are only testing the type of paper, all our planes HAD to be made the exact same way.

After our experiment, the students will be able to make any type of plane they want and we will test that :)

 

 

 

Viscosity - Speed of Liquids

After learning about velocity and friction, we decided to tackle viscosity, the speed of a liquid. This was a new science vocabulary word for me this school year! The students were asked to predict which liquids would move the fastest and slowest.

We compared honey, milk, liquid glue, orange juice, paint, veggie oil, chocolate syrup, and ketchup. Most students predicted honey or ketchup to be the slowest and milk to be the quickest liquid. We placed each liquid in a circle and raised the paper to completely vertical to see which would move the fastest toward the "finish line". Four students helped to time the liquids, each was in charge of a certain liquid and had to report to the class its time.

Ketchup was definitely the slowest liquid, we gave it four minutes twice and eight minutes once and it only made it halfway down the track.. And orange juice was the fastest, we timed it at 1 second each time.

Egg Drop

As a part of both our Forces and Motion unit and our Egg Celebration, we did an Egg Drop. The students created an invention to protect their egg from harm as we were going to drop it from 10 feet. The students were so excited to see the results for both their own egg and their classmates eggs. Out of 19 eggs that were dropped, only 3 broke all the way open (two cracked only). This was the most successful Egg Drop in my five years in the classroom.

 

Forces and Motion - Experiments

Now that my students understand Newton's 3 Laws of Motion, it's time to experiment! Here are two great experiments for motion:

Friction Lab
I found this experiment on TpT. Amanda Leiter's FREEBIE experiment asks students to measure how far toy cars travel as they move down ramps made of different materials. We created ramps from carpet, crinkled foil, wax paper, sand paper, and bubble wrap. Before we started the cars, each student predicted which material would have the least friction.The students started each car at the top of the ramps and measured how far the cars traveled from the ramps.

 

 

 

Action to Reaction

 

Up next, our Paper Airplane Experiment!

Peeps Experiment II

To go along with out Egg Unit, I found a Peeps Experiment on Pinterest. It is from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas. We used five Peeps, water, vinegar, apple juice, soda, and laundry detergent. And, because we are teachers, I created a recording sheet for this experiment. The students recorded how the Peeps changed in appearance each day over one school week. Here's our results:

Prep

Day 1

Day 2

Day 4

Day 5: Final results:

 

 

Based on our experiment, vinegar had the most effect on the Peeps, with water as a close second. The students really liked our GHOST Peep in the laundry detergent. But we decided that it did its job, got the color/stain out! I asked my students what other liquids we could perform this experiment with and they suggested orange juice, soup/broth, milk, and veggie oil.