Taking on Second : Easter

Whew! Moving into a new house, without Internet, sure takes a lot of time! I finally have a chance to blog since we are literally watching the grass grow! For Easter, my sweet mother makes us Easter baskets full of goodies! This year we had a bunch of Peeps...like five packs! So I took them to school and made good use of them!

We took a page from Smart Chick to set up our Peep Mobile race. I had to cut all our cardboard pieces before we could begin.

Supplies:

Peeps

Lifesaves(Wintergreen sure makes the room smell good!)

straws

1 Peep wide piece of cardboard

tape

scissors

one piece of printer paper

I had the kids gather their supplies. They didn't get a Peep until their car was done. Then it was time to lay down the rules!

Smart Chick has the easiest, kid friendly directions to post in the classroom for students to review! I loved that they kept going back to check the challenge rules while they were working.

The Challenge:

Students were challenged to create a mobile that would hold a Peep and go the furthest in three puffs of air. We practiced filling our lungs and getting the most air in one puff. I gave students 30 minutes to design and make their mobile. They worked really hard on their designs.

One issue some of the kiddos were having was keeping the "wheels" on the straw. This was about the only problem that arose in the designs. I tried to give them a hint, but I also wanted them to figure it out themselves.

My room was full of little engineers!

Then it was time to start racing! I had 5 or 6 kids race in the hall at a time. They had a starting line their mobile had to be behind. When I said go, they had to do three puffs of air to see how far they could get their mobile.

Some went crooked, some didn't go at all. There was one that went pretty far down the hall considering they only used three puffs of air. You bet it was one of the kids that is just full of hot air to begin with!

Then there was this one...

He said, " You always tell us to do our best, so I did!"

This was a fun way to spend our Friday afternoon. The kids look forward to their weekly STEM project every week. They come in on Monday asking if we can do science this week. I love that they get so engaged in our STEM activities.

The week of Easter, Aimee and I decided we would have an Egg Hunt. I had a high school helper stuff around 400 eggs with various task cards. The task cards covered many math topics we cover in second grade. I found many of the task cards on TPT by searching for task cards. There were also fun rewards in the eggs as well. The rewards consisted of free ipad app choice, take your shoes off in class, line jumper, purchase a drink or snack for class, homework pass, wear a hat in class, and homework pass. Of course all of the rewards were free. After my high school helper stuffed the eggs, I needed someone (or a bunch of someones to hide the eggs on our playground).

Who could I get to hide them? Of course, I called on the fifth grade to help. So the fifth grade teacher and I traded classes for about 15 minutes. I took his kids out the playground to hide the eggs. He watched my kids (well, they just drew in their notebooks). After hiding the eggs, it was time to find them. Each students was given a baggie and instructed to find only 9 eggs. This was fun!

We went back inside (because it was windy) to open our eggs. We then answered the task cards and enjoyed our rewards. The comments I got from the kiddos were amazing. They said "this is so much fun!" Having fun and learning! That is my daily goal for my students!