Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
(Clip art from Glitter and Glue Designs & Krista Walden’s Creative Clips)
Are you looking for a quick activity for St Patrick’s Day? I love how Super Teacher Worksheets always has the perfect activity at my fingertips!
How Can You Build a Quick, Easy Barometer?
I did this blindly–not really knowing if it would work. I was in search of interesting weather activities and thought I could make this barometer work. When the air pressure is high the arrow points above the middle mark. When the pressure is low the straw points below the middle mark. Here’s the one I made at home. The best thing is that it really works!!!!
A few easy materials:
1.jar
2. rubber band
3. balloon
4. straw
5, tape
6. paper/index card
7. ruler ( and/or grid paper)
8. tape
After I built this I had my doubts about it working. I build one at home first. Get a jar (larger jars are better but I used baby food jars because I had some on hand). Snip off the bottom part of a balloon so that you have a wider surface to stretch latex over the mouth of a jar. Get the balloon as smooth as possible across the lid and put a rubber band around the balloon to seal in the air as tightly as possible.
Here’s the barometer I made at school.
Some places say that you should use double sided tape to attach the straw, but I used regular Scotch tape, and it worked fine. Cut the end of the stew into a pointed shape so that it works as a pointer towards the marked paper. You can incorporate measurement and be as precise about it as you like. With the barometer I made at home I just build the barometer and put a mark where the stars was pointing after I first built it. Then I put another mark about a cm above and below the initial mark. I found mm graph paper online as a free download and used that at school. This makes for a great measurement discussion. Enjoy building your very own barometer!
Moon Pie Phases
Do you need a simple moon phases lesson. This is it. First we discussed how the moon reflects the light of the sun and how the moon is orbiting around the earth and how the earth is orbiting the sun. Then I used a flashlight to reflect off the aluminum foil paper plate moon I had made so that the students could see how this worked. This video helped discuss the moon phases.
Next, we discussed the simple phases of the moon and shaded in eight circles to represent each phase. We also discussed the reason for the name “quarter” and related it to fractions. Here is a great website to visit about moon phases.
*Full moon
*waxing gibbous
*first quarter
*waxing crescent
*new moon
*waning crescent
*3rd quarter
*waning gibbous
Finally, I assigned students to look at the night sky each night to color in their moon calendar which I downloaded for free here. I had students watch the moon for an entire month, color, and label the phases. I told students I would have a “little something” for them if they brought their paper back completed.
What We Aren’t Taught in School
I saw this on Facebook recently and felt that I had to share it. How true and how profound! At least in gifted education, which I currently teach, I do have some freedom to teach kindness which in essence is teaching love.
Even My Principal Remarked How Calming My Room Smelled
Like many of you I have been cleaning my room. Because of the last two years of germ hyper vigilance, I wanted to make sure everything was dust and germ free. With that, I used a Norwex cloth AND my Thieves household cleaner. Both of them knock germs out! The Norwex cloth is rather amazing because it sucks dust up and doesn’t just push it around. I’ve never seen anything like a Norwex cloth, and I keep one at school. Right before the first day of school, my principal came by and remarked how calming my room smelled!
The great thing about Thieves cleaner is that you only need about an ounce to mix with water. I use a Dollar Tree spray bottle and keep it in my classroom for any cleaning needs. The BONUS is that it freshens the air while you clean without any toxic cleaners.
Entertain Your Children Outside with a Mystery!
I’ve posted before here about The Golden Angle, the mysterious 137.5 degree angle that appears in nature and, and my students’ explorations with finding it outside here and here. Recently, I was showing someone about the Golden Angle and how amazing it was in nature. This prompted me to see if I could find it in other places besides an oak tree leaf and grass. Well guess what?! I did. Taking time for a tiny nature walk collection in my yard yielded some more amazement!
With most leaves, I found that lining one side of my angletron tool up to the stem allowed the other side to hit the first vein in the leaf.
Fig tree leaf immediately below:
Shrub leaves below:
Notice how the branches separate at the 137.5 degree angle below.
Nut grass, as my mom calls it, is below. I’ve notices the regular lawn grass grows this way, too when it goes to seed.
I love intriguing math mysteries, and I hope you enjoy them, too.
Not long after I started plucking leaves out of my yard, I noticed a mathy friend of mine posted something on social media about the number 137. Strangley enough, this number is a really big deal to physicists and called the fine-structure constant! Who knew?!
