It's December, and Dong Mak Elementary has entered the final few weeks of it's school year. The Korean school calendar is very different from that of the United States, so the end of the school year on December 23rd will be followed by a more than month long break. Given this time of year, all of the teachers at my school - myself included - are very busy. Evidence of the increased work load can be found in the dwindling number of attendees at my bi-weekly teacher's class. When I began teaching more than a month ago, about ten teachers showed up to each class. Today I only had two, and one showed up 20 minutes late.
As for me, I have been busy planning a two week Winter English Camp that I will operate during January. I have been given almost total control of the camp and need to develop a plan in the near future. At the moment, I am designing the first week as a "Science in English" camp for about fifteen 3rd and 4th grade students. Some activities that I have thought of are building a model of the solar system and creating a papier-mache volcano and staging an "eruption." And here is the real point of this post: Does anyone have any suggestions for fun activities that I could do with the students? Maybe experiments that you remember doing as a kid (or that your kids have done and enjoyed, if you are a parent)? Also, any recommendations for my second week? I may do the same science camp for 5th and 6th graders, but I can also choose to do something completely different. All suggestions are appreciated.
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5 comments:
how about marble roller coasters... they were fun and taught about the effects of gravity all you need is foam pipe covering or something else like that and marbles...have the kids make tracks around the walls with 10 or 15 ft or so of the covering by taping it to the walls and see how well they come out pts. based on creativity and actual working structure.. say they have to make the entire 15 ft work
toothpick bridges were fun too...simple make a bridge out of toothpicks and glue and see how much weight it can hold...show them different kinds of modern bridge structures to base off of and give them a ration of some sort on the supplies... fake money to buy building materials. pts. based on management skills, structure ,and held weight. teaches engineering science i think i dunno i did both of these in my 5th or 6th grade classes
you could also have them bring in different kinds of balls,prefferably bouncy have them drop them fropm a preditermined height and see how far back up they bounce take that data and have them do calculations and make a graph of some sort showing the different bounce height on each ball and how far up they continued to bounce after the initial drop
ex... drop height of 4ft
1st bounce 2 1/2 ft
2nd bounce 1 1/2ft
3rd bounce 1/2 ft
then make a graph of that
...kid who brings in the highest bouncing ball gets extra points for the grade that day...that is if you even use a point system.. either way it is a fun workshop
goddamn i miss middle school
sorry for all of these..i am thinking of things i did back then i hope they help.... 1 more before i go though....this may be a time consuming one though....have them make miniature model houses at home...with the aid of a parent ofcourse...and get a large industrial size leaf blower or something of the sort and see how much velocity it takes to blow down the house. like a hurricane or typhoon whichever they have over there
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