So we used our bendable elves and created some jobs for them! Students were challenged to create a small village using some wooden town blocks and pattern blocks and then create a job for their elf. Their elf had to be able to do their job at some place in their village. We had elves who worked at the hospital (a student had the idea to create a walkway to the front so no one would be injured on the way to the hospital), fire fighters, police officers, dog groomers, food servers, and a variety of other jobs. It was a great activity that allowed us to wrap up our holiday theme before break and allow students to be creative and share what they know about communities and the people who work in them.
As this was the last week of school before Winter Break, the students were a bit restless and teachers were a bit out of energy (myself included!). So I decided to end out the holiday season with one of my son's favorite books from when he was younger, The Littlest Elf (because they both have the name of Oliver!). My students really seemed to enjoy the story as well and were interested in all of the different kinds of job that might take place at the North Pole. So we used our bendable elves and created some jobs for them! Students were challenged to create a small village using some wooden town blocks and pattern blocks and then create a job for their elf. Their elf had to be able to do their job at some place in their village. We had elves who worked at the hospital (a student had the idea to create a walkway to the front so no one would be injured on the way to the hospital), fire fighters, police officers, dog groomers, food servers, and a variety of other jobs. It was a great activity that allowed us to wrap up our holiday theme before break and allow students to be creative and share what they know about communities and the people who work in them.
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This week is our last week before Christmas Break and let me tell you, the struggle is real. I think everyone (teachers and students alike!) are ready for the much needed break. Sleep is definitely high on my priority list and I can't wait to not have to set an alarm! So this week was perfect for a Maker Mat - Christmas/Holiday style! As my students are very familiar with these, I like to change up some of the constraints and resources to keep them fresh and exciting. For this Maker Mat, I introduced students to Plus Plus blocks. Much like when I introduced the Pix Brix, there was a bit of a learning curve despite the simplicity of the building tool. I knew it would be easy for students to build creations that were flat and pretty much two dimensional. So, as part of their Maker Mat building with the Plus Plus, they had to build three dimensional objects. This proved to be more difficult than I anticipated! Students would build a flat object and had a hard time giving it dimension. We talked about how the pieces can be manipulated in different ways to build their flat object into something that can stand on its own and can be viewed from different angles. It is great when I saw the ah-ha moments after a period of struggle! As Winter Break and potential snow days are upon many of us, I thought I would put together a Winter Break/Snow Day STEAM Challenge sheet (a smaller version of my Summer STEAM Calendar of Activities). I know that snow days (and sometimes multiple snow days) can come at anytime, so I know as a parent, I like to have ideas prepared for the inevitable "I am bored" makes it way from mouths of my sweet babes. So why not engage their minds at home with some fun winter-themed STEAM challenges? These are great for elementary students and can be completed with siblings or individually. The goal behind having STEAM challenges at the ready is to keep students brains active and engaged. These challenges do not require technology and most can be completed with everyday things around the house. If you don't have something around that the challenge states, no worry - improvise! STEAM often requires designing, redesigning, and often changing something you were working on for something entirely new. Click on the button below to download the Winter Snow Day STEAM Challenges sheet. The challenge sheets are provided in English and Spanish. I was trying to find some unplugged coding type of activity for my 4th graders as I was going to be missing one of my classes due to helping out with our high school Spanish Market. I came across this pixel activity at Teach Your Kids to Code as well as this maze activity from Brittany Washburn. I really liked the concept of both of them, but needed to do some modifications for my class. I created an unplugged Christmas Coding booklet for them to work through some basic challenges that taught them about coding and computational thinking. At the end, I built in an activity where they can do some building of the objects they coded in the booklet if they complete the challenges. It was a great activity to leave for a sub and still participate in the Hour of Code!
This month the date for the 3rd-5th grade PBIS celebration landed during the week of Hour of Code, so why not have the STEAM activity be a coding activity? As there are 3 rooms running a STEAM activity for 25 minutes, I knew I had to maximize the time - so a dance party it is! I combined the algorithm component of computational thinking to create custom dance moves. Students were led through a slideshow (button and slideshow below) in which they were introduced to some basic commands, what happens when those commands are changed, and then executed with a musical flair! This gives students insight in to how a computer is only as smart as the commands we give it, and there are many codes running behind the scene that make the commands run. And with this activity, executing a code means dancing!
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