Welcome to the Elementary STEM Coach Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Meredith, a former classroom teacher turned K-5 STEM teacher and coach. With over a decade of experience teaching and a master's degree in STEM leadership, I'm here to coach you throughout the year to help you gain back more time to create innovative experiences for your students.

It seems like January has the actual cold winter months and you are stuck inside and trying to keep your students entertained. This is a great opportunity to create STEM experiences for your students that actually connect to what is happening to the weather outside in a lot of places in the world in the winter. Not all, but a lot of you are listening.

This will really resonate with you. In this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you a variety of snow-themed lessons that you can use over the course of a week or if you only see students one day out of the week, you could actually do this the whole entire month. Before I jump in, I received a really sweet audio message from one of you and I want you to take a listen.

Hi, Naomi. My name's Kathleen and I'm a teacher who just got back into teaching after an 18-year break of working in a STEM career, which was in the electrical industry part of the time as an electrician. Now I'm back in the classroom and I'm teaching homeschool kids as part of a school district program alternative learning environment and my kids are K-3, so five to nine years old.

I really appreciate your podcasts and I've subscribed through Audible and I'm just saying thank you so much for all that you're doing and all of the ideas that you're sharing and I love your energy. Thank you. Please keep it up.

Thank you so much. I love getting these audio messages. They pop up into my email and it's always a very nice surprise.

You can also record an audio question or if you want to say thank you as well, you could do that at NaomiMeredith.com slash voice. You can do this off of your phone, off of a computer. It's very user-friendly and you don't need to set up anything fancy to record.

As stated in the title, this is a week's worth of snow-themed lessons and I want to do more episodes like this one because there's a variety of teachers who teach STEM who listen to this podcast. Some of you teach consecutive days where you see the same kids in a row, but a lot of you also teach one day a week and by the end of the week, you teach the whole entire school. So it's really great to have a variety of lessons for this type of episode and I have more planned.

This is a very thematic type of episode, meaning it is all going to go into a theme. Of course, there are standards that are connected to it. So if you need some fun filler activities or you're looking for some sub plan ideas or if you have a really weird week coming up, then these lessons work great.

The ones that I'm going to be sharing, I am actually currently teaching right this second in my K-2 STEM classes in my long-term subposition right now. You could do this with any kids or adopt as needed, take and choose what you need, but everything's going to be linked in the show notes. When you see the show notes for the episode, click on that link that goes to my website because I list out everything.

And a lot of times I'll also add pictures and other videos that are related. So definitely check that out. And I'm going to be taking some videos and sharing them over on my social media platforms at Naomi Meredith underscore.

So follow one, if not all, and you could see even more behind the scenes as it relates to these snowy lessons that I will be sharing. You could teach these in any order. I personally mix them up for myself because I'm teaching this with K-2 because I am the sub and they're probably not going to see these lessons again, maybe with the teacher.

I'll share them with her, but they are new to me kids. I am new to them. And I typically teach different things for every grade level, but since I've never met them before and I'm not the regular teacher, I'm doing the same thing.

So I actually mix up the order to keep my interests and what I'm teaching exciting for me. And some of the things I will add and take away based on if we have a snow day or there's some school event, a few of them, not all the classes can do just based on what we have going on that week. I always try to make sure the students do the STEM stations because I feel like the behaviors and the management is way better.

And the kids are a lot calmer in stations because they are in very structured and smaller groups. They tend to do a lot better. And often in the regular classrooms in K-2, they often do stations anyway.

So that's a process they are used to. So I take upon that and then add that into my instructions. So if anything, I will almost always do the STEM stations because those always work out really well.

All right, so let's get into it. On day one, I've been doing my All About Me brick build, the winter edition, and it is winter themed, not holiday specific. The questions are related to cold and snow.

So if you live in a place that doesn't have that, especially during the winter time, it might be really hard for the kids to connect to. For example, some of the questions relate to warm, fuzzy socks, wishing for a snow day, or drinking hot cocoa. So if that's not typical for your winter time, maybe don't do this lesson.

All you need for this activity, it's very easy, but you need to have a bunch of mixed Lego bricks and in buckets around the classroom. They give me at the table groups. And what you're going to do is you are going to read the question displayed on the board, and then students are going to grab the Lego bricks that it's asking to grab if it's true about them.

For example, if the question is, grab five blue Lego bricks if you have ever been sledding. And the kids get all excited. They talk about it.

They grab their five blue Lego bricks, and they have them off to the side. If it's not true about them, they just sit and wait for the next question. I try to write questions that are pretty general enough where students will be able to answer yes to most of them.

But just keep that in mind as well. You can have students wait to build with the Lego bricks that they collect, or they could build with the Lego bricks along the way. There is also a page where if you want to add a digital component, students can take a picture of their final design and add it to Seesaw.

And then there is a place for students to write a little bit more about what they created. On day two, you're going to talk about something that you can build in the snow for fun, or even some people live in them, not as common, but they can, and you're going to be talking about igloos. You can talk a lot about the engineering of igloos and how they stay warm.

And I also like to show this little video clip over on YouTube. Again, this is all linked in the show notes. But it's a clip from an episode where Curious George builds an igloo.

There is a part two where Curious George wants to save the igloo and take it inside. So I actually show that at the end of class. If kids are doing a good job on this project, this one big project, if they clean up fast, I'll show them part two.

Just a little thing about this. I thought second grade wouldn't like this episode. They really did.

They actually did not mind it was Curious George. So if you're doing this with K through two, it works really well. After we watch part one, where Curious George builds the igloo, and they actually talk about some strategies on how to build it, then students build their own little igloo.

I've done this a couple of ways, depending on what materials I have. I have used different types of bricks in my classroom. So I had wooden planks.

I had foam cubes. I had different foam blocks or unifix cubes. So I set out a variety for students to choose from where they could mix and match and build their igloo.

I also provide little small paper plates where they can actually build around that paper plate or use it as the top of their igloo depending on how they build it. Sometimes I will put out those little counting bears where they can have little characters inside of their igloos. They really enjoy that piece.

The classroom that I'm in right now doesn't have as many building materials. So I pulled out the Lego bricks again. And that worked out just fine as well.

For day three and four. This is when we get into the snowy STEM station. And if you haven't heard me talk about STEM stations before, I like to plan stations with each letter of the letter of STEM.

So a science, technology, engineering and math station. There is often a lot of overlap with these stations. And that is totally okay.

But for my brain, it really helps me make sure that I have a variety of tasks. And if I want to add technology, I try to mix it up where the kids have maybe half technology, half off screen activities, or at least one technology piece. Just so like I said, it's a variety of things for kids to work on.

For keeping track of which stations the students are at, I've done this also a couple of ways. I do have some slides where I keep track of the students and what station they are at. I type out what station they are and their students' names.

And I move the text box to which station they're going to rotate through. It isn't always in the order of the word STEM. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, just depending on where I want them to go.

Right now with my long-term K-5 STEM subbing, I don't know all of their names. I have sometimes gone around and just asked their names really quick. But it also, you know, it takes a while depending on what behaviors are happening.

So what I've been doing at their second, their number two station is I've been just going around taking a picture of them, have the group smile at me. And I have a class list with all of their pictures. So then I've been uploading that picture into Seesaw.

And then on the second day, when they rotate, because I only do two stations a day, two today, two tomorrow. On the second day, I actually have pulled up Seesaw and I told the kids, if you see your face, then you are going to stand up and then go to your next station. They actually really liked this way.

I just tried it. They thought it was so funny because they actually didn't know what the picture looked like. And they were just giggling at what they looked like in their picture.

And then it was just another evidence of what we were doing in class. So that was actually a really great method. I'm going to keep doing that with these kids.

And it's actually helped me learn a lot more of their names. Like I said, I do two stations a day. So two the first day, two the next, it doesn't matter what order they go in.

If they're absent, oh well, they just will do the stations they will do there that day. So the first day of stations, we start off with a video and I show them the SciShow Kids video, how a snowflake is formed. And then I go through and quickly teach the kids how to do the stations in detail.

I actually physically go to the station. I will show them what materials are there. I will show them an example of how to do it.

None of these are super complicated. Sometimes my stations are very teacher led. Sometimes they are not just depending on what I want them to do.

The more directions you have, the more complicated it's going to be for kids and think about their level of independence. So if it's going to take me forever to explain, probably not the best STEM station. At the Science Station, we did toothpick snowflakes.

You could add in modeling clay, you could add in those little cotton swabs, but students are going to build snowflakes that are symmetrical and lots of different designs. I have a little mat for the students to build on. And the cool thing too about stations, it doesn't take a lot of prep after you do the first round of prep, and I don't make a lot of copies.

So they have a little mat that I created that is in my TPT shop where they could build their snowflake on. Those are in page protectors. And I have a little bucket of Expo markers and erasers.

They're just pieces of fabric they can erase with. And they can build their snowflakes using the toothpicks. You can add in Crayola modeling clay that doesn't dry out to stick the toothpicks together.

Or like I said, you could use the cotton swabs, but they are building snowflakes at this station. You could add a technology piece where they take a picture of their design in Seesaw. That is up to you and the level of the technology use that you want to have.

The technology station is snowflake geoboards. I actually use technology at this station, but you could use real geoboards as well. What I did for the technology piece is I taught students how to scan a QR code that would take them to the geoboard website.

Now the geoboard website, it's free to use. It works well on an iPad. It works well on computers.

I've done both ways. And I will link that in the show notes for you, the one that I recommend. There is an iPad app that is also free.

Again, I don't have access to add apps to the student devices, but it doesn't hurt to teach kids how to scan a QR code. That actually is a great skill of going into the camera role, even turning on the iPad, actually teach students how to do that. I am going to be creating a video on how I teach kids how to scan a QR code and they can do it independently.

And so they scan the QR code, it takes them to the geoboard website, and they build their snowflakes using that app. If you wanted to use real geoboards, much like the snowflake station, you could have students take a picture in Seesaw or any other application that you use of their snowflake design. For the e-engineering station, I have pulled up on my screen one of my engineer inspiration boards.

And the one that I chose for this station is all about ski resorts because a lot of the kids in this school have experience being at a ski resort or they know what it is because I live in Colorado. Most kids know what a ski resort is, but I have other themes as well. I have a January themed board.

I have all the months, February, March. I also have a Valentine's Day board. Sometimes I've actually switched out the boards just based on when I see a class.

I will do that too. So you could do that as well. And the kids have Lego bricks or whatever building materials you want them to use.

And they built the items in their own creative way that are up on that board. If you don't want to display the board digitally, you can even print out these boards in smaller sizes. They come in a full sheet size, half page and quarter page.

I've seen teachers actually print out all of them from the bundle, the quarter page, cut them, and then put them on a binder ring. That actually works really well where you have all of the themes ready to go. And for the math station, it is all about snowman height.

On day two of the stations, I actually played the video by SciShow Kids of how to build a snowman. Again, my students have a lot of experience building snowmen just based on where we live. But again, depending on where you live, they might need some more background knowledge.

And using Play-Doh, they are building different snowmen of different heights. So I have containers of Play-Doh for the kids to use. You could even create your own if you needed to.

There's a lot of great salt dough recipes that are pretty inexpensive to make. But they have Play-Doh at that station. And I also have one inch Unifix cubes and a mat for the kids to build and write on.

And they have to build the snowman of different heights, maybe the tallest snowman, the shortest, or however they have to measure the height of their snowman and of how many cubes tall. You could put rulers at this station, depending on your student's experience with measurements. I also recommend having trays.

They look like lunch trays or those crafting trays. There's a lot of different options. I'll link a few in the show notes for you.

If you're using Play-Doh, just because over time it gets a little crumbly, you want to have kids to visually see. This is, I play on the tray. That's what I say, we play on the tray.

And that's really helpful too in cleanup because if there's crumbs, they could take the big ball of Play-Doh, smash the little crumbs, and then they can dump out the rest. I show them how to do that. I also leave like a little broom and dustpan.

And I tell one kid if they want to sweep at the end while we're waiting to clean up, there's usually a kid who's very excited to do this. So that's a really great hack as well. If you want to go in a different direction of the states of matter for this station, you definitely can.

I have a mat where the kids will build the different stages of a snowman that go along with the states of matter. And I actually like to use the book, The Snowy Day for this, because in that book, there are a lot of different ways the states of matter appear. So instead of watching that video, you could even read that book.

It's pretty quick. There's a great animated one on YouTube. So you could take that station a couple different directions.

And if you need a fifth day of lessons, there's been one week I've had the kids for five days in a row. This one is all about sled building. There is a great video on SciShow Kids all about the fastest sled and how it relates to friction.

So there's some good science connections. And then I use Lego bricks for in class, but also for my STEM Explorers Club, my afterschool clubs that I host at different schools. We use popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, and masking tape to create a skier, a snowboarder, and a sled.

But we use Lego bricks in class. And I had big sheets of cardboard that were already cut. And students created their sled, skier, or snowboarder to go down the hill.

And one of challenges I pose to them is what happens when you make the cardboard really high, really steep, and really low? Does it change how your sled moves? And some kids naturally will start racing. So again, very low prep. They really like this one.

Don't let the kids keep the cardboard. But if you pre-cut cardboard that you have big sheets, like the thicker cardboard, have a stack of those. And those work out great.

Or those trays from the day before, flip them over so there's no ridges. And those could be your sled hills too. I hope this gives you some great ideas of snowy theme lessons that you can add into your STEM instruction.

Feel free to tag me on the socials if you try any or all of them in your classroom. I would love that. And of course, everything is linked in the show notes.

Make sure to click on the link that goes to my website because it's more detailed, very specific on what I talked about and what order. So you don't have to go searching or take very copious notes while you listen to me. Just sit and relax.

Listen to my wonderful voice. And the show notes have you covered. I hope you enjoyed this type of episode and planning on doing more of these week-long ideas to help you out.

So let me know if there's a topic you want me to cover, and I will add it to my recording list. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the elementary STEM coach podcast. I would love to connect with you over on Instagram at Naomi Meredith underscore, or send me an email to elementary STEM coach podcast at gmail.com. Also make sure to check out my website, Naomi Meredith.com to see all the show notes from today's episodes and shop my K through five STEM resources.

Any questions you have needs for resources or ideas for episodes, get in touch. I'll talk to you soon.