A place to share thoughts, ideas, gadgets, and giggles from my classroom. 💜

Make Solids, Liquids, and Gasses fun by Making Butter!

Some of my FAVORITE things come from Pinterest! One day, as I was looking around aimlessly, I ran into a post about making butter from {Cinnamon's Synonyms}. I thought, oh that's pretty cool, so I shared it to {Taking on Second's Facebook} page. I had SOOOO many comments about how easy it was and how much students had liked doing it! I decided to give it a try!
We started by talking about the states of matter: Solids, Liquids, and Gasses. 

We practiced seeing how gasses take up the space of the containers they are in by blowing up balloons of different sizes. 

Cassondra, my teaching partner from {Primary Scribbles} had been saving baby food jars. She found enough for both of our classes!
If you can't use baby food jars, it is just as easy to make a class size batch in a mason jar, or any clear container with a tight lid. The one with the white inside is salt. We thought it would taste a little better with a pinch of salt.

 I filled the jars about half way with heavy whipping cream from Wal-Mart.
We listened to how it sounded in the jars as we started to shake. Some of the jars started to leak a little, so we just put them inside a baggie. This completely took care of the issue! 
Then it was time to get serious...
We logged into {Go Noodle}, and Whipped and Neigh, Neighed that heavy whipping cream until it started to become solid! It took a lot of shaking, but we paused the video to listen to our jars every few minutes. 
Once we began to be able to see through the jar again, we shook the jars through the Cha-Cha Slide, to be sure they were done. The students noticed the change in sounds their jars made.  I had never done this before and was not sure what to expect! When we opened the jar, it looked..well just like butter!
I don't really like butter unless it is inside food or on my potato, so I didn't really try it. The kiddos took full responsibility for that! 
The ones who ate their bread and butter LOVED it! They said it was really good! I'm pretty sure this will become a yearly experiment before Thanksgiving Break!


Boost the Writing Process in Primary Grades

Hey guys!  I want to tell you about my favorite writing product that is my lifesaver...basically every week! When I teach writing, I like to have a routine. This pack follows the writing process perfectly!
First, I like to have students practice stretching out sentences. This is a great exercise to help students create more detailed sentences. 
We do several together before I give them the little sentence and they stretch it themselves. My kiddos love seeing how many words they can get in their sentence. 
After brainstorming, which this pack has two webs to choose from for brainstorming, we move onto our rough draft. Students have to have a topic sentence, three details, and a closing sentences. These are labeled in the rough draft section. 
I also have an editing checklist that includes my sentence rules. We practice editing our pages with a colored pencil so they can see the changes that need to be made. Students can also make notes about their mistakes. 
I love his ciduve=kind of! Sometimes I like to grade their editing instead of the final piece. This helps me know if they are really taking the time to fix mistakes or just rushing through this part. 
These are available in my {TPT Store}!


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