Second Grade Science: The Human Body

For Second Grade Science, one of our units is The Human Body. I have to tell you, I was not impressed with the curriculum and resources available to my students for this topic, so, of course, I made my own. I made the pieces as we went along and kept adding to this growing project.

Before diving into the writing and the INB pages, my class and I did a lot of hands-on activities and read-alouds. We read The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body, Parts by Tedd Arnold, and after learning about the brain, we totally learned the song "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz. They loved it! I loved hearing, "Wait, Mrs. Smith! He would NOT be able to dance and sing if he didn't have a brain!" 

I turned to Pinterest for a couple of hands on ideas, especially with the heart and the brain lessons.

Here's my Pinspiration for a timed "Beat the Clock" activity to help kids realize how strong and amazing our heart is! They had a BLAST. I found this idea through Pinterest which led me to The Primary Theme Park blog:

The heart pumps 1.3 gallons of blood per minute! So we got a gallon of water in one bucket for students to try and scoop to another bucket in a minute! I couple of kiddos got close but no one was able to. Of course it was raining outside the day we did this, so we did it inside, carefully on our Superman blanket. Thanks to the Pinspiration above, here's our try below:

Also during the lesson we did on the heart we did an AWESOME and extremely easy activity with our pulse. We put marshmallows on toothpicks, balanced them on our wrists after finding our pulse, and watched the toothpick dance! To spice it up a bit, we did an exercise video and then watched our toothpicks REALLY go wild with our heart rate even higher. The students were amazed at how the toothpicks were moving. Here's the Pinspiration from What the Teacher Wants blog:

And here's our try! I will be doing this every year. It was easy and it really stuck with the kids.

As we moved through the unit, my class did a fabulous job keeping track of their learning activities in their Interactive Science Notebook. I pulled a couple of resources from the Florida AIMS Life Science book, but I made a lot of my own. Check out the photos below. These activities are included within The Human Body Unit on TpT.

We also created "brain hats" which was another Pinspired activity. The students looked so cute walking around with their brains on all day. LOVED IT!

Here's the Pinspiration from Ellen McHenry's blog. The free download for the template is there. The Pinterest photo shows the different sections of the brain. I printed the template without that and the students colored the different sections.

Here's one of my kiddos sporting her new awesome brain hat! Here's what I learned: card stock is WORTH IT; use Scotch tape instead of glue and don't be skimpy on it; print the adult size version because there are some kids with BIG heads. 

HOW CUTE IS THIS?! While we wore them, we read a mini-book from the Florida AIMS Life Science book (Brain Power) and learned "If I Only Had a Brain." I linked the video below. The kids loved it and it was a nice little break from the "work." ;)

Within the Human Body Unit, I included integrated Literacy and Math printables. The writing task cards were a big hit in my classroom and not only allowed me to see if the students understood the human body, but also allowed them to make self connections. There are several full color and black and white centers, including a True/False sort (perfect for practicing for true/false test prep), Word Wall cards (very handy to go with those writing task cards), and some really neat "brain games." Take a look at the preview and larger pictures below:

Check it out in my TpT store HERE or click the image above. I hope you enjoy this unit as much as I did!

KEVA Planks are the Bomb

You guys, I have been wanting KEVA Planks for my classroom since last January when I saw a presentation about them. The presenter was amazing and gave me tons of ideas on how to use them. I was so excited! So you can imagine how excited I was when MindWare contacted me to review them here on my blog!

Disclaimer: This post contains sponsored content, affiliate links, and review products. Regardless, these are 100% my own opinions.



So what are KEVA Planks?

KEVA Planks are wooden building pieces. Yeah... it's simple. Every piece is the same unlike other building blocks and the size and weight of the pieces make structures incredibly stable. Take a look at this structure I found on the official KEVA website.

Back in January, I went to a STEM workshop in Orlando and one of the presenters was showing us amazing uses for KEVA planks in the classroom. In the beginning he showed us Brain Builders. Mindware sent me two packs of Brain Builders and I cannot WAIT to use them with my students in my classroom.

The Brain Builders pack (not the Junior version) has everything you need to get started. It comes with 40 planks so if you don't want to buy a large set, you can start with the Brain Builders and at least get started. The challenge for students is to use the 2D images to create a 3D structure.

Here's the fence I built.

You can see that I had all the views necessary in the 2D diagrams to build it. This was a Beginner Level card. The Expert Level cards are NO JOKE, people. I tried the rowboat... but... I decided to take a picture of my fence instead....

For those of you looking for STEM activities for little ones, MindWare also offers a Junior version of Brain Builders.

What I like the most about the Junior version is that it is very easily integrated into any subject area. I taught Kindergarten previously (now I teach Second) and I love how these challenge cards show letters, numbers, shapes, and even some cards for Science topics. I would have loved to see that moon and stars card when we did our Day and Night unit!

I chose the Structures set to start with for my classroom. It comes with 200 pieces but there are larger sets available. The Structures set comes with a booklet with ideas and inspiration for students to take a look at and get creative. MindWare also has other sets like "Contraptions," "Connect," and "Colors." Remember, all the planks are made to be the same. The booklets in each set will provide different types of things to build. Take a look at these pages from the Structures booklet I received with my set:

The tops of the pages indicate how many planks you'll need for the structures.

There are so many ideas on how to use KEVA planks in your classroom. Here are some that I came up with just by opening the pack. Think about what your kiddos will come up with!

I am so excited to use these with my students next school year. If you use KEVA Planks in your classroom, comment below! I'd love to hear your ideas! If you don't already use KEVA Planks in your classroom, take a look at MindWare's website to get started. Click the image below to head there now!

What Worked: Science Notebooks

Howdy, readers! Today is the first day in the blogging series/linky "What Worked." For the next few weeks I'll be posting about the reflections and best practices I've had in the classroom this year. It is also open for other bloggers to share their posts on each topic, so be sure to check out the other posts at the end! I can't wait to read what everyone else has posted so I can continue to improve my instruction year to year.

Today being the first day, I am here to bring you what worked in the area of Science Notebooks! MY FAVORITE!!!

Let me begin by making a few important points:

1) I did not create everything that went into the Science Notebook. I used many different resources to make sure my students had a lot of variety, which is something that definitely WORKED! Underneath each picture there's a link to the location in which the resource can be found.

2) I did not take a picture of every single page in the notebook. We would be here all day, people. I tried to get a picture of a lot of different types of resources used, so you can see the variety. Most often, I used a resource type more than once for each unit of study.

3) The photos are taken from student notebooks, so they are created and loved by kids. The key for me was that students needed to be neat, but that ultimately it is THEIR notebook. Often you will see doodles and decorations, which I would like to point out was something that WORKED! My students had ownership of their notebook. They loved their notebook. And when I said, we're going to do a Science Notebook activity, I got actual cheers of excitement! :)

Let's get started!

Let's talk about the notebook itself. These are the 1 subject spiral notebooks from Target (the Up and Up brand). My county was lucky enough to have a TON of these donated to us by our local Target, so I used them for our Science notebooks.

WHAT WORKED:

1) The plastic cover was super durable. This picture was taken this week after an entire year of using them!

2) There is a cardboard pocket inside before the first page which was wonderful for those times where we didn't get to finish something and had to store it for later. It also worked well for student make-up work if they were absent. If a student was absent, I just slid in what we did into the pocket for them to make-up later!

The cover page is part of a great freebie from Not So Wimpy Teacher, which is where I also got their Table of Contents pages. Click HERE to download it.

I printed one out for each kiddo, we trimmed them, colored them, and then I used packing tape to secure it all the way on. It makes it look like the whole front is laminated.

Here's a picture of one of the Table of Contents pages. This is also in the freebie offered by Not So Wimpy Teacher. We made sure to update our Table of Contents each time we did an activity and the kiddos labeled each page to match the page number.

NOTE:

Some activities took more than one notebook page, but to save space on our Table of Contents, students got in the habit of labeling each page for the activity the same page number if it had more than one so we didn't have to keep writing the same activity over and over again in the contents. For example, the Rocks Science Spin was a two page notebook activity, so both pages were labeled with a 23.

RESOURCE LOCATION #1:

I found this little dude in the Second Grade AIMS Life Science book which we have available to us at our school. I found a lot of printable resources from that book that went well with hands on experiments as well.

WHAT WORKED:

1) These types of activities where students can flip open flaps and see what's underneath were a HUGE hit with my kiddos. This was one of the first activities we did at the beginning of the year and I still catch some students going back to look at it and lift the flaps. It was highly engaging and still is!

2) This was a FREE resource for me. I just went to the school's resource room, found the book, and made some copies.

RESOURCE LOCATION #2:

I created this one myself after I found that there were not that many Second Grade notebook resources for the Human Body unit. This foldable is part of my Human Body Unit, which you can find HERE or by clicking the image below. This is just one of MANY foldables included in it which are suitable for primary kiddos.

WHAT WORKED:

1) Colored paper RULES. Unfortunately I didn't have much of a budget for colored paper and I was not able to spend a ton of my own money on colored paper, but when I did, BOY HOWDY, it made a big difference on the level of engagement and excitement from my kiddos. The colored paper makes it eye popping.

2) Flip flaps are a total win. Similar to the human body dude above, the students love to go back and flip these open which is practicing on their own (can you say, every teacher's dream??)

RESOURCE #3:

This is actually from a product on TPT that is advertised as a lapbook activity. Instead of creating a lapbook, however, I picked out the activities I thought would be best for my class's needs and we put them in our notebook instead! So if you ever see a great lapbook activity on TPT but don't think you'll have the time to complete each piece with your class, don't disregard it! It still has tons of interactive activities that will go great in a notebook! This specific activity is from the Butterfly Life Cycle Lapbook by Mrs. D's Corner. 

WHAT WORKED:

1) I used the activities that worked for my class, but didn't feel obligated to use up my file folders and copies on every page that didn't fit into our schedule. It's a win-win! I also still have the file in the event that one year, I may want to do the lapbook! Who knows?

2) Lapbook files tend to have a LOT of different styles of foldables and activities because when you put them together into the file folder, you want them to look snazzy and exciting. That means that although we are working on the same unit of study, the kiddos have a lot of varying types of activities and foldables. Happy kiddos!

RESOURCE #4:

Sometimes the plain ole worksheet will make it's appearance into the notebook. A lot of times, I'm able to find these in free downloads on TPT, on Pinterest, or even just Google Images! I tended to use things like this when time was limited, there was a substitute, or when I was running out of copies for the month! This specific worksheet was also included in the Butterfly Life Cycle Lapbook by Mrs. D's Corner.

WHAT WORKED:

1) Quick and easy!

2) Depending on the worksheet, they were just as engaging as the flip flaps but they took less time to construct. Again, varying the type of activity made a world of difference for my kiddos this year.

RESOURCE #5:

This was a freebie I found on TPT of an emergent reader/mini-book. It is offered for free by First Grade Schoolhouse. Click HERE to download.

WHAT WORKED:

1) With the printable half page books like this, you can fit a lot into one notebook page. This little booklet has 5 pages fit into one stapled booklet. That's a lot of information at the students' fingertips but without wasting several pages of our Science Notebook.

2) This kind of mini-book has lines for students to write in what is happening in each illustration. This kind lends itself well for students to make connections and become the author of their Science Notebook. This was a great formative assessment tool for me to make sure the students understood the steps in the life cycle.

RESOURCE #5:

This is also from an AIMS Science book found at my school. These are little foldable mini-books full of information. I just snagged a box of envelopes at the dollar store, we glued them in, and VOILA! A little book pocket! It isn't pictured, but we worked on highlighting key details inside the mini-book and on the page next to the book, we wrote the facts we learned from it.

WHAT WORKED:

1) Variety, variety, variety!

2) The students really liked decorating their envelopes and typically decorated them to match the topic we were working on. This student drew the ground with little pea plants coming up! 

3) These helped me integrate ELA by highlighting key details and summarizing the facts on the other side.

RESOURCE #6:

I am lucky enough to have a school that subscribes to Scholastic News and Science Spin. They don't always match the unit we are studying, but sometimes they do! We read them, do the fun activities, and then we chop them up and make our "own" magazine page! This one pictured above is from Rocks That Rock Science Spin. We cut out each paragraph and each picture to match and glued them in!

WHAT WORKED:

1) Very colorful and exciting to see in the notebooks. I already mentioned that COLOR makes a big difference!

2) This was a resource literally delivered to my classroom door. Not every school subscribes to this, but if you are able to speak with someone at your school or to get any sort of grant for it, try! It is an awesome resource and you get TONS of them throughout the year. There's also interactive games and vocabulary on the website that we use on the Smart Board as we read along.

RESOURCE #7:

Dirt?! That's right. We were studying rocks and soil and my students brought soil in from their backyards. I have found that if it is something that is small or flat, why not put it in? My students freaked out excitedly to get this taped in! 

WHAT WORKED:

1) Well, it's dirt. It's free. It's easy to find.

2) There was an awesome shock factor involved with this. The kids were blown away that I actually had them tape their dirt into their notebook! NOTE: You'll definitely want to use packing tape on this...

RESOURCE #8:

Readworks.org is an amazing place to get reading passages! I use that site ALL THE TIME! Not all the passages are as awesome as this one with the chart to glue in, but many are. They have all subjects and all grade levels. I chose this one to share on the blog because it has the awesome chart as well as bolded words (yay text features!) and helped a lot with vocabulary. Not pictured are the comprehension questions included. After each passage on Readworks.org, there are comprehension questions! By the way... this is a FREE resource!

WHAT WORKED:

1) The website let me select the passages based on my students' needs. There are all different reading levels and the variety is amazing.

2) There are paired passages also on Readworks.org. There was another article "paired" with this one that allowed us later to compare and contrast.

3) The comprehension questions are already there and done for you. Just print and go! Sometimes I put these in their notebooks, other times I used them as quizzes or assessments. The possibilities are endless.

RESOURCE #9:

This was one of those ideas I had late into the year that I wish I had thought of AGES ago! I received a ton of those manila library book pocket things and wanted to use them somehow in our Science Notebooks. I had the students glue two of them in, fold the tops down and we created pockets for vocabulary flash cards and definitions. I used these in a lot of different ways. The first day I introduced the unit, we cut our cards and set up the page. Then we watched a video on BrainPop Jr. While we watched the video, we paid attention and listened for the vocabulary words they talked about. For example, if the video told us what "liquid" was, we put the card into our little stack. Usually, BrainPop Jr. talked about about 75% of the words in our pile. It chunked the learning of the words into smaller sections so the words were not overwhelming. It also made the students really focus on what the video was saying. This page was also handy because throughout the unit, we used them to play a matching game, quizzed our partners on our vocabulary, and played a memory match game with them facing down.

WHAT WORKED:

1) High level of engagement, no matter what point in the unit you are in. Students were super focused on the video listening for each word. They were excited to match them up when they started to master the vocabulary and they LOVED playing memory match and using them as flashcards with their partners.

2) By focusing on a few words at a time, we chunked the list of vocabulary words to make it easier to learn and less overwhelming.

So there ya have it! I hope these help you get prepared for next year. If you haven't been using Interactive Science Notebooks, what are you waiting for?! They are seriously a game changer.

Make sure you stop by next week for the next post in the "What Worked" series. Next week's topic is ELA Centers!

If you are interested in linking up your blog post about what worked with your Science Notebooks, please read the rules below and have fun!

RULES:

1) Must include the What Worked Schedule in each post that links back to Daisy Designs.

2) Links MUST be to BLOG POSTS relating to the topic of each week. NO PRODUCT LINKS. Product links and photos are totally okay within your blog post, but not as a link in the linky.

3) Check out the other bloggers' posts and comment on the one posted before yours.

And here are the images to get you started for next week! Thanks for stopping by!

An InLinkz Link-up

Five for Full Moon Friday!

WOAH, what a day! There's a full moon, which I know I don't need to remind teachers of. If your day was anything like mine, you could tell! It's not only been a crazy day, but such a roller coaster of a month. I feel like a terrible blogger with all the time I've let pass by. My blogging schedule has been updated and here I go! Starting with one of my favorite linkies ever... Five for Friday! Thank you Doodle Bugs Teaching!!

Let's start with my BRAND NEW OFFICE!!! I am so excited and in total love with my new work space! Here's the deal: my sister-in-law was our roommate for about a year. In our current home, the space was not an issue. I needed a little workspace though, as I prefer to work on a desktop computer. My room was combined with the guest room. It wasn't bad. My desk fit in there fine with the queen size bed, but having guests over was never easy when I wanted to get on my computer. Anyway, my sister-in-law decided to move which left an extra room for the guest room. We moved out the guest stuff and updated my new office. <3 My husband and I are expecting a baby and I'll have the summer all uncomfortable and pregnant to work on my blog and TpT store (yippee!). He decided to completely spoil me and helped me redo my office!!

View from the door. LOVE my rug and curtains!!!

My new desk! I've had the three monitors for a while which he also spoiled me with. The top one is my Netflix screen. ;)

Disregard the ugly chair. We are working on getting it covered. It is too comfy to give up!!! I'm going to cover it in black and get some cute colorful pillows.

And the best was the giant Ikea shelf that I could stare at all day.

Now that we are approaching the end of the year (only 25 more days to go for me!), I've been reflecting on this school year. It was my first year teaching Second Grade, as I taught Kindergarten in the past. The curriculum was all new to me, the age group, even the room I was teaching in... all brand new to me. First of all, let me tell you now... I ADORE Second Grade!!! Second of all, over the next few weeks, I will be blogging about some of the things I did this year, things I would change, and things I feel like were a total success. Be sure to check them out. The first one will be on my favorite thing EVER.....

SCIENCE NOTEBOOKS!!!

(Credit to Not So Wimpy Teacher for the notebook cover)

Keep your eyes peeled for a post on what worked and what didn't work for my class's Science notebooks this year. 

As you may know, my husband and I are expecting our first baby in August! I would like to say we've been working super hard on getting the house ready... but I'm not gonna lie... I've just been trying to survive the end of the school year before I get crackin' on this place. The nursery was previously kind of a junk room. We worked pretty hard on it over Spring Break, so I shouldn't feel too bad. There's not much left to do in there, but I feel like I'm dragging my feet. At least I'll have the summer home to nest, right? With testing season coming up next month, I'm gonna focus on that for now.

However... we DID buy a crib and dresser!!! It is so beautiful! I can't wait till it gets here and we get it all set up. <3 

These are the pictures from the Babies R Us store in Orlando (my town doesn't have one...). I love it!

I also wanted to fill you in, if you missed it, about a Freebie loop that was on Instagram last weekend. One of my freebies was included in it and in case you missed it, you may want to snag it up before Mother's Day! It's a Kindergarten Mother's Day Sentence Builder set and it is a forever freebie. I loved using these last year and although I love my Second Grader's... I do miss some things about good ole Kindergarten. Click the picture below to download it!

And if you don't already follow me on Instagram, you gotta click below! It's my favorite form of social media and a group of us do freebies and giveaways on a pretty consistent basis! You definitely don't want to miss out!

Looking for some Rockin free resources to wrap up this year? Tap through all the pics to snag your #freebies and find some awesome teacher authors to follow! Here's my Mother's Day FREE Sentence Builders to help your class celebrate in May! Temporary link in my bio! Have fun!

A photo posted by Amanda Smith - Daisy Designs (@daisydesignstpt) on Apr 17, 2016 at 4:00pm PDT

I've got some new projects I'm working on for my TpT store that I am falling in love with already! I just posted a great subtraction review pack that is great for First Grade. Click the picture below to check it out!

I also have some things I'm working on that I can't wait to finish and share with you! As you probably already could tell just by reading this post, my favorite thing EVER is teaching Science! I could teach Science all day long! I am working on some Second Grade Science units this year. My first one was The Human Body Unit (pictured below) and now I'm working on Rocks and Soil! Stay tuned!

Click the picture to head there now!

A work in progress! So excited!!!

Thanks for stopping by my little blog! Have a wonderful weekend, teachers!