Back at Blogging

Well, it has been almost two years since I have posted.  A great deal has happened in those two years.  I got married, learned a new grade level, and bought a new home with my husband.  Things seem to have settled down a bit, so I am going to give blogging another try!

This was a great year in fifth grade!  We learned a lot, gained new friends, and had a ton of fun.  I especially loved the last few weeks of school.  We practiced our graduation ceremony (which went great!), enjoyed a picnic, and completed several STEM activities.  My students loved these activities.  It was awesome to see them apply all of the skills we had been working on all year.

We did the Egg Drop Parachute Challenge, Spaghetti Tower Challenge, Boat Design Challenge, and Catapult Design Challenge. My students surprised me with all their awesome ideas.  They thought of ideas I would have never thought of.  When we completed the Egg Drop Parachute Challenge, most of the groups were successful, which was awesome!  However, my class wanted to see some eggs crack! We decided to remove the parachutes from their designs and see how their eggs would fare.  There were broken eggs everywhere!  This was definitely their favorite part.

These activities were an awesome way to end a fun year. I purchased most of these activities on TPT.  Just search STEM activities and a ton of choices will be available for you.

This is a picture of one of the towers from our Spaghetti Tower Challenge. The goal was to build the tallest tower with the available supplies, but the trick was that they had to balance a large marshmallow at the top. My students came up with some great solutions and of course we had to eat some marshmallows too! :)