A little STEAM to mark 100 days!

Look what I found in one of our buildings recently!

Outside of the music room, I found this AWESOME bulletin board!  Thanks to Michelle Hardwick for letting me share her awesomeness!

We know that the 100th day of school is becoming a biggeR and biggER celebration in elementary schools, and this bulletin board knocks it out of the park!

It's a relatively simple concept...students look at 100 in so many ways on this day, why not with sound, too?

Inside each of the little milk bottles is a different item--100 of each.  They have been hung on the board so that students can explore the sounds that are made by the different items.

Not only do I love this for its fabulous STEAM connection, I love it for all of the possibilities it offers us...

For example:

    What if you marked the 50th day of school with a container of items, would it be half as loud as a container with 100 of the same item on the 100th day? What changes?

    Looking down into the container of 100 thumbtacks, what is your estimate for how many thumbtacks the container will hold?

    How will changing the container change the sound of the item?

    If we dumped out the items in one of the containers, what are some different ways that we could count them that would help us in the event that we lost track of our count?

    If you had 100 paperclips on the 100th day, and you created another bottle with 100 paperclips but you added a clip for each day after the 100th, how many days would it take for the sound to be distinctly different?  Would it be different?

     Why do we mark 100 instead of 90?  90 is the halfway point of the year?  What fractional part of the year is the 100th day?  What do containers with 90 items sound like?

What uses can you think of for this idea?  Share in the comments below!

The Solar Eclipse

I'm sure you are preparing for the excitement of the partial solar eclipse we will be able to share with our students on August 21st.  There are many ways you can integrate this event into all subject areas.

While this post shares a lot of resources for you and your students, I think it is really important to ask your students some big thinking questions:  What do you notice?  What do you wonder?  Starting simply like this will give the students some ownership and choice in what they hope to discover during this phenomenon.  

There are a lot of resources to be found to help your students better connect to and understand what is happening, and I am sure you have found many! Here are some more resources that may help you as you work to celebrate this event with your students:

Countdown to the Great American Eclipse  : Article that guides you through the eclipse through NGSS.

Eclipses across the Curriculum:  Article with ways to integrate this celebration throughout your day.

Total Solar Eclipse over Illinois: Information about the eclipse in Illinois.  Contains a lot of fun facts as well as an awesome table of data about the eclipse as viewed from different cities in Illinois.

Eclipse Resources:  This page has a variety of resources.  Some are geared towards K-3 while the others focus on 4-6.

NASA Eclipse Website: This site has a variety of information and visuals as well as data from past and future eclipses.

An Observer's Guide to Viewing the Eclipse:  This article is from the NSTA.

Southern Illinois Teachers Eclipse Planning Group:  Many science based activities to use with your students.  Many of these activities are grouped by student level.

Please feel free to share your own resources or ideas in the comments below.