Science

If you are like me, you have a giant collection of “stuff” saved just in case it will be useful someday for one project or another. Hot summer days are the perfect time to pull out this stuff and let kids go wild. How can you be sure they will do something productive with those old cell phones, paper towel tubes, and lovely containers of various shapes and sizes, though?

As we move through the heat of summer, I want look back to see how well we have been busting that summer slide! Camps, lessons, and summer activities can make it hard for parents to make time for enrichment at home. Holidays and a compressed schedule make planning a challenge for summer classroom teachers, too. Since we have been posting activities for each day, I wanted to compile them in this post so you can come back to those activities when you have time. Be on the lookout for more new resource suggestions on Friday.

The following activities focus on music and math, two subjects that can often be intertwined. These were featured on the Gateway the past few weeks on Music and Math Mondays.

Welcome to week 3 of our Summer Slide Buster series here on the Gateway! We have been having fun choosing and testing activities, and we hope you found some of our suggestions interesting and useful. Whether you are a teacher, a parent, or both, you can find activities on the Gateway to inspire all the kids in your life to keep their minds active during the break.

As a parent and teacher, I have seen the effects of the “summer slide” or “brain drain” both at home and in school. Kids who aren’t given the chance to exercise their brains during the summer break will most likely lose a lot of knowledge they gained during the school year. Parents have the tough job of helping their children stay educated, entertained and out of trouble during the summer months.

The arrival of spring can mean spring fever for both teachers and students. Teachers have the tough job of keeping students interested and engaged in the midst of spring break, standardized testing, and the countdown to the end of the school year. Even as the year is winding down, teachers have plenty of opportunities to bring valuable learning to their students in unexpected ways. This week’s theme on the Gateway is the human body, a topic that can be adapted to many different subjects and grade levels. A study of the human body can include different types of activities including active games, art, writing, and scientific investigations.

Curiosity is natural to the soul of man, and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections.
– Daniel Boone

Ever since the beginning of time, humans have been trying to make sense of the world around us. Curiosity prompts us to question why things are the way they are, and how things work. It’s the eternal quest of human beings to want to really know, to understand how to unlock the secrets of the universe. As the above quote by Daniel Boone illustrates, objects and ideas that fire our imaginations can become potent interests, or even passions.

In the 1920s, French fashion designer Coco Chanel inadvertently started a trend when she was photographed with a suntan. Previously dismissed as the badge of farmers and laborers, suntans suddenly became the emblem of luxury and leisure, and everyone wanted one. Nearly a century later, tanning is still popular. Despite all the research linking sun overexposure to skin cancer, the tanning industry continues to grow, and grosses about $5 billion annually. What’s wrong with this picture?

Movie day!  Students love to be entertained, and teachers love the chance to sit back and breathe a sigh of relief (or tackle that giant pile of grading).  No lectures to take notes on, just a passive viewing of a movie in a nice, dark, cool classroom, right?  I hope not.  I hope we can find simple ways to use movies in class as more than just entertainment.  Instead, movies can engage students and inspire thoughtful, critical thinking about current classroom topics.

In spite of the unusual weather in many parts of the world, summer really is around the corner. Some of you have already started your summer vacation while others of us are in school for most of June (and searching for fun, educational activities to keep our students from checking out early!). Whether you are looking for lessons to round out this year, ideas to use later, or even activities to do with your own kids at home, Joann’s space shuttle picks could give you a nice variety.

Do you have a polymath in any of your classes? A what?? A polymath is defined as a very learned person with encyclopedic knowledge. A polymath is a person who thinks, explores, and experiments to become an expert in many fields. These are the kind of people who treasure lifelong learning (and people you definitely don’t want to go up against in Jeopardy!). I know I don’t quite fit into this group of experts, although I wish I could say I do. To create a thinker of this caliber is the ultimate goal of many educators.