What makes a PowerPoint or Keynote slide presentation amazing?  It seemed, to most of my students, that the transitions and putting as much information as possible.  In working with some middle school students I learned that they really didn’t understand the point of using a slide show for a presentation. Based on prior research...
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  Kids like to discover new things around them and discovering flavors and smells around them.  I did a little smell survey with my group using cocoa, chili powder, nutmeg and cinnamon.  Since all of the colors were fairly close, it made really have to use their sense of smell to determine what the...
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One of the activities that every kid loves it building with these large scale plastic rods with connectors.  Today’s challenge was to make a rocket as a team.  They understood the concept of making a rocket but working as a team…well, some did and some didn’t. If you don’t have the tubes a simple...
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  We’ve been working on our butterfly garden with the help of Nina Jaffray (she has done more than just help – she gets the right plants, she is an inspiration and encouragement for me and all of the kids to take on this project and she teaches all of us by sharing her...
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  The pioneers needed to provide for 6 months of food on the trail and, since there were no Walmart’s to go to if they ran out of supplies, enough to live on until they could grow their own.  Tools were simple. So we had our students get to experience having to grind their...
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The covered wagons are parked and ready for their supplies. Preparing for our travel on the Oregon Trail has been fun.  The students have all been grouped into “families” with new names and occupations.  They have been very excited by their names and “How do you speak Swedish?”.  On this day the families are...
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Why do we need Leap Years? Leap Years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun. It takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days to circle once around the Sun. However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year, so if we didn’t add a day...
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        After reading, “Because of Winn-Dixie” my reading group performed a short play for the rest of the class.  My students were thrilled to do it and I thought others might enjoy it too! We served egg salad sandwiches with frill picks and pickles too!  It was fun!  
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An excellent activity to help children understand intolerance is to do this simulation of segregation. It is a powerful activity that effects everyone involved. It is based on a similar activity done in 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. This is a video taken 2 years later for the teacher,...
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Looking for a way to introduce fractions to your students?  Start very concrete.  Make fractions as real as possible. One way is to cut up a Hershey’s Chocolate Bar to get the idea that fractions have to be equal pieces.  If you cut it into to unequal pieces and give the smaller of the...
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