September STEM Challenge, Stories, and Activities: Apples

I love when I find new products that I can use to encourage learning, creativity, and logical thinking in my home!  We are planning to use these new Seasonal STEM Challenge cards from Carson Dellosa in our homeschool this fall for my second grader, but even if we weren't homeschooling, I would incorporate these into learning @ home activities! 

The card set comes with thirty seasonal activity cards, ranging everywhere from gravity and stacking apples, to how to make a trap to catch a leprechaun and how to build a zip line to rescue your Elf on the Shelf! 

Here are the resources that I've pulled together to use in September when we study all things apples!

The STEM Challenge card I have chosen is called Apples On Top.  The challenge is to try to stack five apples on top of each other in a tower and have them stand independently.

If you want to do more, there are several other apple and STEAM related activities on the back of the card, as well as a hint to accomplishing the challenge, and the science behind the challenge.

I love to include picture books into any type of learning so today I chose a few that featured apples falling from the tree and bonking someone on the head, much like the story of Issac Newton goes.   Ouch! by Ragnhild Scamell is a fun story story for fall.  Hedgehog just finished preparing her nest for winter when an apple falls from the tree and gets stuck on quills on her back.  And now she doesn't fit in her nest anymore!  Oh no!  Letting Go is in the Loopy Coop series of early readers by Janet Morgan Stoeke.  Pip, Midge, and Dot, the lovable and goofy hens of Loopy Coop Farm wrestle with the age old question--why do apples fall?  On their way to their own unique conclusion, they go from being scared silly to just plain acting silly. 

Newton and Me by Lynne Mayer is a rhyming story that takes us through the day of a young boy and his dog, Newton.  While at play, they discover the laws of force and motion and realize that Newton's Laws of Motion describe experiences they have every day and they recognize how the forces affect the objects around them.  Educational information is included in the back matter.   I had to add some good non-fiction and National Geographic Kids never fails to provide great information with phenomenal photographs.  Apples for Everyone did not disappoint.  I also pulled Gravity is a Mystery from the Let's Read and Find Out Science series.

Carson Dellosa also sells a non-seasonal STEM Challenge card set that looks like lots of fun, too!  Want both?  They sell a bundle with both sets.

I purchased the following activities from TeachersPayTeachers to round out the day.

3-D Apple Craft

Hedgehog and Apple craft

Life Cycle of an Apple

Invitation to Play: Dear Zoo Story Basket

Story baskets are a great way to encourage imaginative play while practicing early literacy skills.  Plays is one of the five early literacy practices that can help teach and encourage narrative skills, vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, print motivation, and print awareness.  Reading, writing, singing, and talking are the other four important early literacy practices.  Your child can experience independent play and discovery if they are investigating this story basket on their own, or you can expand their exposure by reading and talking with them during one-on-one time with the tray.  I recommend a little of both independent play and one-on-one with parent or caregiver.

Story baskets, or story trays, are easy to put together with things you have around the house.  Little animal figures are a staple in our house--we use them for so many learning and play activities!  If you don't have them, you can use stuffed animals, or hand-drawn and colored pictures.  Depending on the story that you choose, you may find appropriate items in the kitchen, dress-up bin, or craft box.

The book Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell is been a long-time favorite in our family, so it made the perfect choice for this week's story basket.

Click the image above for a video of how I put together our tray. 

Here is what I included in this week's story basket:

-Safari hat 
-Safari LTD Jungle Friends TOOB  
-Safari LTD Pets TOOB
-Safari LTD Reptiles TOOB
-Brown decoupage boxes
-Dear Zoo Board Book
-Magnetic letters are from the dollar spot at Target.

Growth Mindset

I have to be honest, I hadn't heard this phrase until I attended my daughter's Kindergarten curriculum night last year.  But after hearing it, and doing a little research, I wondered where it had been all my life!  A person with a growth mindset believes that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.  Instead of "I can't read!" they might think "I can't read YET." I have put together a list of excellent picture books that help support a growth mindset.  These are great books to have in your general home library, and also support lots of fun extension activities.  We were recently given a copy of the Growth Mindset print-ables from Big Life Journal to review.

We have done two activities so far.  First we read Your Fantastic Elastic Brain: Stretch It, Shape It to go along with the I Can Grow My Brain poster activity.  It was at a great level for my six-year old and my three year old listened to the story and helped us color.  We also read a favorite, Beautiful Oops!, and followed it up with the Take Chances, Keep Going worksheet where we got to finish the drawings left by raccoon and fox.

Here is a description of the Growth Mindset Printable Set from their website:  "This bundle of Growth Mindset Printables Set from Big Life Journal is designed to help children develop the mindset and skills they need to realize their full potential.  It's great for ages 5-11. This printable kit is different from Big Life Journal, none of the materials overlap.  The dynamic worksheets, activities, posters and coloring pages are designed to help children truly understand that they have the capacity to learn anything!  The colorful and engaging activities teach kids to pick themselves up after they fall down, find strategies to apply to challenging tasks, and persevere when learning gets tough.  The kit also contains valuable growth mindset handouts and guides for parents and teachers."

You can see my full video review here.

Hold my place!

We have a lot of books in our house, even though we use the library multiple times a week.  I try to go through periodically and "weed" out some that we don't NEED.  But we still have a lot.  For the most part I don't mind but it makes me happiest when they're at least organized.  The kids pull out lots of books and read them,which makes my momma heart happy, but they don't put them back very nicely, which, well, you know...  :)  I spent a lot of time sorting the books and finding ways to make it easier to access what we want and put them all back where they go and where there's room for them.  I have a pretty good system down in the kids' room and our play room, but the books in the living room were still giving us problems.  Target Dollar Spot to the rescue!  I've been drooling over YouTube videos of all of the new learning items people are finding at their local stores.  Luckily, my store hasn't stocked a lot yet, which is helping my fairly non-existent self restraint.  I did find these little beauties for $1 each.  As soon as I saw them I knew that they would be perfect. 

I believe they are meant to be pointers for teachers to use at the board with their students.  But we're using them as shelf markers!  When they pick out a book, they slide a shelf marker in its place.  When they bring the book back, they know right where it goes.  Of course, my kids think they're the coolest things ever.  Even if they don't become master shelvers, they are beginning to understand the concept of putting books back where they go so that we can find them again later.  I think we might start taking them to the library with us, as well. 

Library Scavenger Hunt

If you read my post about summer reading, you may remember me mentioning our library scavenger hunt cards.  I created these cards to use with my six year old this summer to help encourage her to spend time selecting books at the library before she plays.  I also want to begin to teach her about how things are organized in our library, including the Dewey Decimal System.  She has a lot of fun with these cards.  I have a huge pile of them that I printed on card stock and laminated.  She picks one from the pile on our weekly library trip.  We use a dry erase marker to check off what she finds. You can find the cards available here in my TeachersPayTeachers store.   As I mentioned in my previous post, I love that we have such play-centered libraries at our disposal, but I wanted to make sure that we were also slowing down a little bit to appreciate all of the books available to us as well.  I created around thirty cards that cover different Dewey numbers, as well as topics without their Dewey number.  I also created a "cheat sheet" bookmark with the Dewey categories on it for us to use as we're learning.

Before I introduced the cards for the first time, we read the book Do You Know Dewey?: Exploring the Dewey Decimal System to learn a little about the types of non-fiction and how they are organized in the public library.  For good measure, we also talked a little bit about how we should treat books, especially those that we're borrowing.  So far it's been a hit and she asks for the scavenger hunt card if I forget to mention it.  Our summer reading is going great and we're checking out lots of new and interesting books we might never have found before!

Play is the work of childhood

I'm not sure if I'm learning from my kids, or they're learning from me, but I think it's probably a little bit of both.  I'm always organizing activities for my kids, but today, they came up with something on their own and I was thoroughly impressed.  Ava was reading one of her library books Curious George Subway Train Adventure.  George gets to ride a subway train for the first time and, of course, accidentally leaves the man in the yellow hat behind.  Adventure ensues, as is expected, but so does learning about maps and direction.  When she was done reading Ava said "I'm going to make my own subway map" and then several hours of imaginative play followed.  She and her brother both made maps of an imaginary subway in our hometown and listed all of the places they would want the subway train to stop.

They used our glider as the train car and  played together (without fighting!) for hours.  They frequently checked their maps, visited all kinds of fun places, and pretended to get lost, miss the train, and other things that required some creative problem solving.  I had to smile because this is the exact kind of activity that I would offer as an extension of a book, and she came up with it all on her own.  Now part of her ingenuity might be because our playroom has been off limits for the past two weeks.  After it got so messy that you could no longer see the floor, my husband and I thought everyone needed a break from the playroom and the overwhelming amount of items inside of it.  While we go through and purge and organize, it has been locked up during the day.  We have noticed that the kids are getting much more creative in their play and are turning towards art and coloring more frequently.  I don't plan to get rid of all of their toys, but it has sure been a nice break.

Today's adventures reminded me of a quote from Mr. Rogers and I will leave you with that:

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning.  But for children play is serious learning.  Play is really the work of childhood."

Summer Reading!

One of the items on our Summer Bucket List is to sign up for the library's summer reading program and visit the library weekly.  My kids love books, and they love the library, but sometimes they have trouble wanting to look for books when we get to the library.  We are blessed with excellent, forward-thinking, kid-friendly public libraries in our area, and as they should, they all have lots of opportunities to learn through play.  The toys are amazing.  And we always take time to play when we're there.  But I wanted to find a way to encourage my kids to really spend some time selecting good books while we were there, too.  The Library Scavenger Hunt was born.  I will share more about it and how to get it in a later blog post, but here's a sneak peek.

Today we went to sign up for the summer reading program.  A little incentive for tracking your summer reading never hurt anyone and my kids were excited to sign up and get started. In addition to our library's summer program, I created my own for Ava to track her reading goals this summer.  I call it the "Summer Reading 100 Book Challenge."  When I was in first grade I loved to read.  To challenge me, my teacher gave me pages that had a caterpillar with boxes to write in the book titles that I read.  I was so proud of myself when I got to 100, and I still have that print-out somewhere today.  It's fun today to look back and see what books I chose to read nearly 35 years ago.  I wanted to offer something similar for Ava where she can write down the books that she reads this summer.  We've been enjoyed the sweet treats this summer so I went with an ice cream theme.  You can find the challenge printable to use yourself here.  If you have younger kids, you could skip writing the book title and just have them color a scoop for every book that is read to them this summer.  Make it work for you!

Added bonus:  This also helps to reinforce counting by 5s  :)