Try this fun pollination STEM activity for students to make a craft stick model bee then simulate pollination using mac and cheese powder!

As you are going to discover, I adore foldables. Many of my postings will show the foldables I use in my classroom. Here is my model for plant parts. To create it, a regular sheet of copy paper (or in the case of my model, cardstock) is folded in half, hotdog (or lengthwise) style. Cut marks are made every 2 3/4 inches, but don't cut it yet, as it will make drawing the flower more difficult. Using these marks, draw a flower in the top section, making it large enough to fill the space. In the next section down, you will need to draw a leaf or two and a bud. The following section is the easiest--just continue the stem and establish the ground line. In the bottom section, draw roots. For my example, I drew fibrous roots because these are the roots my students most easily recognize. Color your image and label the parts. Now, you are ready to cut the sections apart. Inside, using the cuts as a guide, my students and I fill out the information needed for each plant part, in particular the job of the part. We fill all this out together to ensure students have complete and accurate information. Once the foldable is ready, students use them to study from and to self test. Tip: reluctant artists may find free hand drawing a flower intimidating. While I encourage them to try to do it on their own, I do have traceable images they can use if the stress of drawing is too great.

This project and center came about when we were studying plants, flowers, and sequencing. You can see that our sunflowers had begun sprouting in their egg cartons. The children were really excited about that and it gave us an opportunity to talk about the parts of a plant. I had previously left the sprouts out so that my co-teachers could help me keep and eye out and water them when I was not there. By co-teachers, I mean we share a room. There are three of us in the room and three separate classes. Two of our classes run with the same themes and book titles while the third is a camp class of sorts and is always full of fun happenings. Our Friday teacher set this up on our science table thinking we would like to do this with our kiddos as well and she was totally right. Since it was also our week of A Rainbow of My Own, I swapped out the trays or rainbow colors and added our polka tray in the center to hold the parts. I brought in flowers from my garden at home and culled from the leftover plants we had from the previous week and set them out to for the kiddos to explore. We talked about the parts of the plants and went through the various names as each child selected something from the polka dot tray. On our tray, was an assortment of the renegade bean plants that sprout when we "accidentally" leave black beans in the sand box after sensory play. One of the kiddos totally made the connection and insisted on going outside to harvest the remaining plants. Of course this led to others wanting to plant more so out came the tub of black beans as the children carefully planted them in our sandbox.

Try this fun pollination STEM activity for students to make a craft stick model bee then simulate pollination using mac and cheese powder!

With the lovely turn in the weather it seems that many of your topics and themes are turning towards growing and planting and minibeasts

If you are like me, you are scrambling to find fun and engaging spring activities that help build skills in the areas of ELA and…

This is the such a fun little Grass House plant lifecycle activity. This Plant Lifecycle activity is perfect for kindergarten, first, and second grade. Your students will have so much fun creating their own greenhouses and yards full of real grass. What's Included: -directions -printable houses and fences that are labeled with what plants need to grow -editable name houses and fill in the blank houses -four-week observation journal **Please know that by purchasing this resource you are purchasing the rights to use these activities in a single classroom. If you plan to share this resource with other teachers, please send them to my store to purchase individually or you may purchase additional license(s). THIS RESOURCE WAS NOT CREATED TO USE WITH ANY DIGITAL PLATFORM OR EASEL**

If you are like me, you are scrambling to find fun and engaging spring activities that help build skills in the areas of ELA and…

Try this unique cheese powder pollination activity for kids to demonstrate how butterflies and insects help plants grow! It's high engagement fun ideal for students in 2nd, and 3rd grade learning about pollination, the life cycle of plants and the butterfly life cycle.

Try this unique cheese powder pollination activity for kids to demonstrate how butterflies and insects help plants grow! It's high engagement fun ideal for students in 2nd, and 3rd grade learning about pollination, the life cycle of plants and the butterfly life cycle.

Here's some photos from a project any Science teachers (and Art!) out there might find interesting. We have a very creative Science teacher at our school who often has really unusual projects for the kids. This is a lesson I look forward to every year. Grade 6 Science students construct large scale animal habitats out of boxes. Many of these are over 4 feet tall! Update: see the 2023 versions HERE. They are essentially stacked boxes (some are made from empty photocopy paper boxes which students can collect from the school or their parents' workplaces). Others are made from stacked shoe boxes or other smaller types of sturdy boxes. Then the insides are covered with construction paper and/or painted in some way. Each layer represents a different layer of the chosen habitat. I teach most of these kids Art so it's interesting to see how they approached this project and what materials and techniques they used. Materials used within each box range from handmade items to store-bought items: Cardboard tubes for trees, animals made from Plasticine or bought at the dollar store or printed out from the internet, lots of dried or fake plants and leaves, or plants made from construction paper, pipe cleaners, dried moss, etc. All the elements are neatly labelled. They're so fun and interesting to look at! I think the kids did an outstanding job and learned about habitats along the way. Being able to express their learning in such a creative way is really special.

I am linking up again with Teaching With Nancy's weekly linky - TGIF - Thank Goodness It's Free! Be sure to head over to her blog to pick up some more free stuff! We are finishing up our unit on plants and here are the greenhouses that we made. I have seen similar designs on Pinterest and decided to create one that we could use. Let me pause here to say - SEEDS ARE AMAZING! I forgot to buy bean seeds and remembered that I had pinto beans in my sensory bins! So I just grabbed some from the bins!!! And they grew!!! AMAZING! And did you know that you can use dry bean soup mix from the store to sprout? Here are the seeds on Day 1. And on Day 11. I love planting in plastic bags, because we are able to see all the plant parts! You can grab the Greenhouse pattern and directions below! Just click on the cover thumbnail! ***If you are having trouble accessing the file, please try using a non-work, non-school related account.***

Here's what we've been doing this week! The students are spinning the spinner to create a seed pattern. The students made a scarecrow and planted a pattern. The students made a crow by tracing their foot and hands. We made a class book! We made long legged turkeys. We made hand print turkeys and added a border pattern. We planted pumpkin seeds! We planted corn seeds! We will observe and record our results. We compared scarecrows and people. We made scarecrow glyphs! I made cute candy scarecrows to give the students. Take a look at our TRICKY TURKEYS! Make a free photo slideshow

What a busy week! I can’t believe it is only Thursday! Well we’ve been up to our elbows in plants this week. Here’s a peek at what’s been “sproutin”” in our classroom! To kick off our seeds and plants unit, we’ve been using The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle (You can check out this special […]

Last month, 3rd grade started this little project, after I was inspired by the Instagram post of the incredible art teacher, Ms. Rogers! You can check out her IG here! I believe they painted their backgrounds, but since we're still art on a cart this year, we had to improvise! Here's how we created ours! Materials: Pencils Hexagon tracer Crayons Sharpie Markers Crayola Oil pastels Day 1: We draw our bees together. I do a little directed drawing, then we trace with Sharpies, and color with crayons. After they draw their bees, they can get started tracing their hexagons to make the background! (some liked the cardboard tracers better than the plastic, btw) After we filled up our paper with hexagons, we colored with pastels! We colored with brown and orange lightly, and then colored with yellow very dark, so they looked beautifully blended. After they colored, they cut out their bees and glued them on! Stay tuned for some more awesome art! DISCLOSURE: LINKS TO PRODUCTS ARE AFFILIATE LINKS, WHICH MEANS I GET A SMALL COMPENSATION FOR SALES. THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR BLOG!

Last Christmas my oldest received an ant farm so for the past few months we have been observing a colony of ants. We were all so fascinated by them that I decided it was time for a mini – stu…

I'm going to have my students learn about art from other cultures and I've always loved the Aboriginal Dot Paintings from Australia and New Zealand. Aboriginal Dot paintings didn't exist until 1970 when Geoffrey Bardon became an art teacher with the people in Papunya, Australia. He encouraged the Aboriginal People to record their drawings with paint on canvas instead of in the soil. Since the Aboriginal People didn't have a written language they used drawings to tell their stories and history. During ceremonies Aboriginal people would clear and smooth over the soil to then apply sacred designs which belonged to that particular ceremony. These designs were outlined with dancing circles and often surrounded with dots. In the early years of Papunya (dot) paintings still showed clear depictions of artifacts, sand paintings and decorated ritual objects. But this style disappeared within a few years. Uninitiated people never got to see these sacred designs since the soil would be smoothed over again and painted bodies would be washed. This was not possible with paintings. Consequently Aboriginal artists abstracted the sacred designs to disguise the meanings associated with them. Thus lines were painted with dots. The works feature a symbolic language of U shapes, concentric circles, journey lines and bird and animal tracks. Artists used a limited number of motifs to express many meanings. A concentric circle, for example, may indicate a camp, a waterhole or corroboree place (A corroboree is an event where Australian Aborigines interact with the Dreamtime through dance, music and costume. "Their bodies painted in different ways, and they wore various adornments, which were not used every day."). It may also represent all or part of a person, the stem of a tree, the centre of a food plant ancestor or a natural feature such as a hill. I am going to encourage my students to use some of the same designs in their paintings that the Aboriginal People used and an animal native to Australia such as: Kangaroo, lizard, turtle, koala bear, snake, platypus, etc... The early paintings used mostly earth tones native to the desert landscape, but as time has gone on brighter colors are being used. Materials needed: Black or brown paper bamboo skewers Acrylic paint Pencils Begin by drawing your main animal shape on the paper. Outline this with the skinny side of the skewer dipped in white paint. You'll probably have to dip about every 2 dots. The skinny side will allow you to get more detail in your design, then you can fill in with larger dots. In my design I included concentric circles and a "Journey Line" as well as decorative designs. Next add some shapes such as arches, spirals, circles, wavy lines etc.... Now you just add more and more dots around and inside your animal. Continue filling in with more dots and add more shapes until it feels balanced and finished. Use both the fat and skinny side of the skewer to get contrast. There is a meditative quality to creating these - where the students are just responding to their design with pattern and color. It's a lot of fun and students can easily achieve wonderful results. Student Artwork: