Spring Break - My Guilty Pleasure

We have just started Spring Break here in Beaufort, South Carolina. Sadly our weather is not cooperating with rain and cooler then normal temperatures forecasted for the week (no beach on this break! In fact I have been wearing a sweater for the last couple of days.).

I know this doesn't quite fit into the science, education, and notebooking theme I have going here on this blog but I thought I would share anyway :)

About two weeks prior to the break I call the local cosmotology and massage schools in the area. They give reduced rates for the services with pedicures running $10, facials $15, and massages $35. I book what I can during the week that I am off. Typically they offer their services during the school day so the only time I can take advantage is when we do go on break. They book up EXTREMELY fast in our area, hence why I have to call at least 2 weeks out in order to get any services done. They rarely run services during the summer and holiday months (when they are on break) so I load up during spring break (it gives me something to look forward to and I usually use it as an incentive to get some household spring cleaning done).

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Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock...

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more ...

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

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