CE Google Hangout with the AMAZING Josh Funk!

Click the photo below to see the highlight of our day - A Google Hangout with the AMAZING author - Josh Funk!

Eggcellent Learning with Farmers Pa & Mcmillin

Photo source: http://www.adventuresci.org/events/event/eggcellent-science-2/

My two FAVORITE farmers visited CE last Friday! Farmer Pa and Farmer Mcmillin taught our students all about the life cycle of a chicken. Not only that, they have supplied our 1st grade classrooms with eggs that hatched today!

Farmer Pa & Farmer Mcmillin are here-CE 1st Ss learning about chickens @randicheyenne7 #castleberryisd #ceohgo pic.twitter.com/ZBiOKh81wq

— Sallee Clark (@libraryclark) May 13, 2016

1st grade has baby chicks! #ceohgo pic.twitter.com/W9BtSQytPu

— Cheyenne McMillin (@randicheyenne7) May 16, 2016

Students also learned about how a baby chick hatches and the anatomy of a chicken.  Did you know chickens have an egg tooth? Following the lessons with our farmers, students returned to the library to learn about sound waves and sounding boards.  Students created their very own chickens in a cup. We had so much fun with these farmers! Thank you Ms. Mcmillin for including the library in your science lessons!

Library Collaboration Project: Interactive Solar System

The 3rd Grade teachers and students at Castleberry Elementary School are Amazing!  Thank you so much for allowing me to collaborate with you and for taking a chance on coding!  The result is authentic learning with collaboration, making, and technology!

Throughout this collaboration project our students created Interactive Solar System Displays!

The students:
*Researched information on each planet in our solar system
*Collaborated and created solar system displays
*Collaborated and shared their research by coding within Scratch.mit.edu

As each planet is touched their research information is shared on the screen!
Scan the QR codes below for a few examples.  Links are below as well :)

YouTube Examples:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Press Green flag to begin - Red stop sign to stop

Directions below each 

Press the Green Flag
Keys to press:
Space Bar
Right Arrow
Left Arrow
Down Arrow
Up Arrow





Press the Green Flag
Keys to press:
Space Bar
Right Arrow
Left Arrow
Down Arrow
Up Arrow

More Scratch.mit.edu Examples

CE Library Winter Wonderland

CE Library Winter Wonderland

The week before winter break, the CE library hosts a week of maker activities that we like to call Winter Wonderland! It is my favorite week of the year! This year we had two activities that we educational and fun! The students were engaged and excited about the challenges.  

Challenge 1:

Students were challenged to create new antlers for the Grinch's dog, Max.  They were then asked to persuade the Grinch to choose their antlers.

Challenge 2:
We read the book The Biggest Christmas Tree Ever! Each group of students were given 35 small drinking cups and we challenged them to build the Biggest Christmas Tree Ever! Throughout the building time, we measured each tree and posted the tallest height on the board for students to work toward passing.  The winners created a talking Christmas Tree stating their height using ChatterPix.

Biggest Christmas Tree Ever Playlist:

STEM: Samurai Santa

Library STEM Lesson: Samurai Santa

Have you read the book 

Samurai Santa by Rubin Pingk?

This might be the cutest, most fun, Christmas book EVER!  

Friday we celebrated National Ninja Day by reading this clever book.  Incorporating STEAM or STEM into our library has been a goal of mine this year and this wonderful read aloud offered the perfect opportunity to reach this goal.  

Third grade is studying procedural text at the moment, so we used this as the TEKS to focus on, but encompassed so much more than just how to write procedural text.  

As you may well know, we do not see too much snow in Texas, so in preparing for an EPIC snowball fight, we must first make snow.  Students measured and mixed to create fake snow.  We used three table spoons of corn starch and three heaping and growing table spoons of foam shaving cream.  They mixed the ingredients together to create "snow".  We then fashioned this creation into snowballs.  Following this experiment we went into the computer lab and blogged about 

"How to Make Snow".  

I highly recommend you purchase this EPIC read aloud!  Click HERE for a chance to WIN a free copy!