Naomi Meredith  00:00

February is selfishly one of my favorite months, and it's because my birthday happens to be on Valentine's Day. You know by now that I love a good theme, so in this episode, I will be sharing with you five February STEM activities that you can use in your classroom. These are lessons that I have done with my students over the years, and they have absolutely loved them, I know that your students will too. 

Naomi Meredith  00:59

A couple of announcements for you before we jump into this fun episode: the doors are open to my live two-hour virtual STEM workshop that is going to help support you with K through two planning since we know that planning for the little ones can be pretty tricky. In this two-hour workshop, you will be planning a full unit for one of your grade levels that are in K through two. I will be showing you the exact system and templates that I use for my younger students. Now if you can't make it live, that is absolutely okay because this will all be recorded for you. So if you are listening to this later and the live has passed, it will still be available. So you can go through this workshop on your own time. So of course, you'll have that unit plan finished, but you will also create a base and a system that's going to help you with future lesson planning. You're going to have so much fun planning for the younger students that you're actually probably going to start loving it as well and have all the ideas for a future lesson. So I hope you can join on in. All the info will be linked in the show notes. You can check out when that will be hosted, whether you join us live or you want to watch the recording. Also, coming up in the future, another way that you'll be able to connect with me and other STEM teachers all over the world is I will be starting a virtual monthly book club. I know that reading can be a bit hard as a teacher in general, but this will help you find books that you might not have thought about before in the STEM education space. As I said, this is a great way to connect with other STEM teachers. Even if you don't read the book, you know, that's like a whole thing about book clubs, right? So there's a waitlist started up for that. So don't miss out, I would love to have you join in when that is live. So that will be also linked in the show notes. So jump in on these two opportunities! I have so many things coming up for 2023 to help support you and the elementary STEM space. Thank you so much again for being here, and I can't wait to connect with you further. 

Naomi Meredith  03:06

All of these STEM activities for February that I'm going to be sharing with you can be done as one-day challenges or spread out over time. You know your schedule better than I do. I have done both of those methods for the lessons that I will be sharing with you. So definitely modify what will work best for you and the grade levels that you teach. I also did some of these when I was a classroom teacher. So if you are a classroom teacher that's listening, definitely try these out as well. Again, everything will be linked in the show notes so you can recreate it if you want or if you don't feel like recreating, I have it all laid out for you for every single one of these. They will be in my TPT shop and again linked in the show notes. So let's jump in on these fun February STEM activities. 

Naomi Meredith  03:56

This first one is Groundhog Day shadows. This is one that you'd probably do at the beginning of the month since that's when Groundhog Day is and this is really great to help students understand the science behind the light and shadows and also a little bit of history about Groundhog Day. I always show them the video of what Groundhog Day is, and if it has actually happened, they always have a replay of the groundhog if he has seen his shadow or not. In my opinion. Groundhogs are a little bit gross looking, their teeth are disgusting to me. So when I do this challenge, the groundhog picture I use is way cuter than a real groundhog. I do not like rodents. I'm pretty sure they're a rodent, or they're pretty close to one, and they gross me out. Anyway, for this challenge, you need a picture of a groundhog, a paper cup for each student, flashlights to share, and tape or glue. Students will color and cut out their groundhog. They can add it to the cup in whatever way works best for them. Sometimes I will even show students how to make an L brace using cardboard. If you don't know how to do that it's a great cardboard building technique. I have a video that you can use with your students, and there's no sound on purpose. What I like to do is play the video on a loop on YouTube, and then students can watch it whenever they need to on my screen. So there's actually a hack that I use all the time when I am teaching building techniques. So I'll link that for you so you can check that out and use it as you need it. Students will build their groundhog that is on the cup and then around the classroom, they will create the shadow for the groundhog and figure out what they need to do to make the shadow bigger and smaller. If it's nice enough outside, you could take the cups outside with the groundhog and use the light outside. I live in Colorado, so it's usually not very nice in February. So that's why I have to use flashlights. So again, a great one-day challenge that you can do with your students to teach them about light, shadows, and Groundhog Day. 

Naomi Meredith  06:08

The next STEM activity for February is candy heart baskets. The ultimate goal for this challenge is for students to build a basket and see how many candy hearts can fit in their basket without falling out, which can be another part of the challenge. They have to carry it across the room, which will really test the durability of their basket. You can grab those simple candy hearts, and you can find them anywhere. I am more partial to the Sweet tart candy hearts which taste like sweet tarts. I don't really like the chalky ones. Of course, check on allergies and all that if you teach all the students in the school, and most of you who listen to this do. You might even want to find little heart erasers or something similar online, they're about the same size, and then you can reuse them over and over again. So if you don't want to deal with food, I totally get it. I typically don't deal with food, either. Well, in this position, as a classroom teacher, I was more likely to use food because I knew all their allergies and all of that. So up to you on that little part. Students can build their baskets out of reusable items in the classroom or consumable items. From there, if you want to really dig into the math piece, students can create different types of graphs. So a line plot to graph the class results of how many candy hearts were in each basket. They can create a bar graph to represent how many of each color heart were in their basket and even create a Pictochart. So those definitely go along with, I know off the top of my head, third-grade math standards, and then you can even dive into those graphing questions: how many more and how many less, so really get that M in STEM. So if you are a classroom teacher, you could make this last all day. In reading, you can read about the history behind how candy is made. In science, you could build this candy heart basket, and then in math, you could do all the graphing, so this is really integrated content and can last you a whole day if you're thinking about it. So this is a fun challenge to do in your classroom. 

Naomi Meredith  08:19

The next February's STEM activity is a STEM and stories challenge. You can read the story Beekle and connect it to magnets. There is a long title for this story, I'm pretty sure it's the Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat, which I might have butchered the title. I love his books. By the way, when I look back at what I have created and done, it seems like I really enjoy his stories, which I obviously do. In this story, there is an imaginary friend Beekle, and he's having a hard time finding his human and connecting to someone who is just his person. While on the other side, there's a human who's having a hard time finding their imaginary friend. Eventually, they connect and just are absolutely obsessed with each other. Thinking about the science connection with this, you can have students explore things that are magnetic and not magnetic. From there, they can create their imaginary friend or unimaginary friend, how the book goes, so their imaginary friend and a human and how they can connect perfectly together. This might take a little bit longer than you think depending on the materials that you use. I used magnets and paper clips and other small things that can be attached. Then they created their little characters out of either construction paper or felt. So there's a lot of art in this challenge, and it is definitely a STEAM project. But again, this can be a great one or two-day challenge that you do in your classroom. Then students could even have their own imaginary friends or unimaginary friends connect with other ones. But you can definitely take this further, and there can be a lot of creativity and smiles with this activity. 

Naomi Meredith  10:06

The next February STEM activity is having a themed engineer inspiration board. I love having these on hand for throughout the year. What you can do is find different images that relate to the month, or with Valentine's Day, or other holidays in February. You can have students recreate those images using any materials that you have on hand. So again, you can use reusable or consumable items. If you want to take this a step further, they can quickly plan their design and build, and then they can share. Seesaw and Flipgrid are great options for this share. So especially if you are using things that are reusable, they can take it home by taking a picture. That's what I like to say in my classroom. This is also a great STEM station for the younger students. So if you're joining in on the workshop, Naomimeredith.com/primaryworkshop, then this could be an option that you can use when you are planning one of your STEM stations for your younger students. So very easy to prep, very easy to implement, and you don't need a whole lot. There's a lot of engagement that students can have in this activity. 

Naomi Meredith  11:16

The final STEM activity for February that you can try in your classroom is a Valentine's box STEM challenge. This is something that I did when I taught third grade, and the kids loved it. Maybe this is something that you might even collaborate with the classroom teachers. So if you do Valentine's parties or friendship parties in your school, maybe they make their Valentine's box in your classroom, that might be a pretty cool connection. You can do this, and a lot of different ways you can have your students vote on a class theme. So maybe everybody's box has to go along with the theme of space. So that will help a lot with creativity with constraints. Also, thinking about constraints, have some success criteria for the box. Does the box have something that opens and closes? Is there something that is shiny? Is there a place to put in the cards and a different place to take the cards out without breaking the box? So all of those different things might come to mind with your box. Also, put a limit on the size. When we did this, we made sure that the box will fit on top of their desk and that other students could easily put in Valentine's cards. If you're a STEM teacher and doing this challenge, I would recommend even having the boxes be a lot smaller. So can the box fit in a grocery bag? Because we know based on past episodes that I've done, Makerspace episodes five and six, if the projects are really big, it's going to take a longer time. So a shoe box size is actually a great size when it comes to Valentine's boxes.  So think about if you can do this challenge with your classroom. As I said, it'd be really cool to do this collaborating with classroom teachers, even if you did this with one group of older grades like fifth and sixth grade. That'd be pretty cool as well. So keep it in mind, have a fun way that you can have a STEM Valentine's Box Challenge. 

Naomi Meredith  13:18

As a recap, here are the five February STEM activities that you can do in your classroom. First is Groundhog Day shadows. Next is candy heart baskets. Third, themed engineer inspiration boards for February. Fourth, and I know I said this out of order, the STEM and stories with Beekle and connecting those two magnets. And fifth, the Valentine's Day box STEM challenge. Hopefully, this gave you some good ideas of what you can do in your classroom when it comes to February STEM challenges. Definitely take off with it and run with it. Or if you don't feel like making anything, as I said, I've made all of this for you. It's linked in the show notes and also in my TPT shop. So that will definitely save you some time. Take it from me. I love themes, and I love planning this way for fun. It's like it's a creative outlet for me, so you can definitely check that out. Also, while you're there in the show notes, make sure you sign up for the K through two virtual STEM planning workshop and join the waitlist for the STEM teacher book club that will be coming up in a little bit. Thank you so much again for listening, and I will chat with you soon.