Color Themed STEM in the Classroom

Do you spend time with colors in your classroom?  Does your entire class dress in a certain color on a certain day?  Do you read color themed books?  Do you practice reading and spelling color words?  Do you sing songs about colors?  Do you make colorful artwork?  If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," then you may want to incorporate an exciting (according to my students) and easy color themed STEM activity into your color fun.

One of the most important parts (if not the most important part) of doing STEM activities in your classroom is gathering and organizing your materials.  For this color themed STEM activity you will need:  food coloring, various household liquids (I used water, vinegar, shaving cream, and oil), eye droppers, see through contains (I used Mason jars), and some small paper cups.
To go along with our activity we completed mini books to record our predictions, observations, and creations during the experiment.

Because of time restraints, we conducted part of the activity as a whole group, with yours truly doing the demonstrations.
To begin, students predicted what the water would look like after adding the colors and then I added them.  Next we did vinegar.  Nothing crazy happen with the water or the vinegar.

We added colors to the shaving cream.  It didn't mix.  The students really liked how it turned out.  It was pretty funny, a couple of my young learners thought the shaving cream would explode.  They were a little relieved.

The last observation was how color mixed with oil.  Oil really has the coolest reaction.  Because the food coloring is mixed with water, the colored water doesn't mix with the oil.  It created pretty little bubbles in the oil.

While I conducted the demonstration, the students asked lots of questions and we discussed why the colors looked the way they did after adding them to the liquid.  We also talked about mixing colors to create new colors, which was the segue to the final part of our color themed STEM project, creating your own color.

Each student got their own small cup and shared the eye droppers and colored water.  They mixed two or three colors until they reached their favorite new color.  After they created their color, they illustrated it and wrote about it in their mini books.

This activity worked out really well.  It was simple and engaging.  I will definitely use it again next year when we are focusing on color.  I'll probably make one change by adding some additional liquids into the mix.

As far as other activities during the week, we did quite a bit of work with color words during our literacy time.  Sorts, matches, writing, and centers...students need plenty of work reading and writing color words.
I'll leave you with a few of my favorite color themed read alouds.
(Bear Sees Colors by Karma Wilson, The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers, The Day the Crayons Came Home by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers, Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd, A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni, White Rabbit's Color Book by Alan Baker, Monsters Love Colors by Mike Austin, Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by James Dean and Eric Litwin, Red: A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall, and Sky Color by Peter H. Reynolds)
Wow! such variety about one topic.  That is why learning about colors can take your so many directions in your classroom.

What are some of your favorite color themed books and activities?  I'd love to know.
Have a great week.

Keeping It Groovy with Pete the Cat Saves Christmas

We are down to one week before winter break.  Not that I'm counting (wink, wink).  Like most of you, I am trying to fit in every fun bit of learning that I possibly can before we wrap things up for the year.  One book I knew I wanted to hit during these last few days was Pete the Cat Saves Christmas.
I'm in love with the Pete books (especially the first four).  I'll pounce on any opportunity to use them in class.
One of the ways we extended Pete the Cat Saves Christmas was to make these super cute Santa Pete crafts to decorate our room.

Our Petes turned out awesome.  They are so colorful.  They really make our space festive.  The kids were so excited to make them.

If you would like to make this project with your class, you can click on the picture below.  

In math we used the Pete the Cat Saves Christmas theme to practice place value, with a write the room activity that we used two different ways over two days.
On the first day the students simply went around the room and wrote each number from each card on their recording sheets.  After all of the numbers were recorded, they grabbed a highlighter and headed back to their seats.  Then, with the whole group, I told them to "highlight the number in the tens place" or "highlight the number in the ones place."  It was a simple activity that made my young learners really have to think about the place values of the digits.
On the second day, students went around to each card and drew the base ten counters to represent each number.  This variation provided some much needed practice with place value and number representations.  Since it was a write the room activity, the kids had a good time because they could get up and move, move, move.

This activity could also be used for a round of scoot.  It could also be prepped in a tote and made into a math center.  If you would like to check it out and try it out with your own students, you can click on the picture below for a FREE copy.

A literacy activity that we fit in this week was a color word review match up.  I printed enough cards for each pair of partners to get their own set of cards, so that we could complete this task whole group.

This review worked really well and hopefully helped build more confidence in my young readers.  

You can also have this Pete inspired literacy center for FREE by clicking on the picture below.

We had such a good time learning with Pete the Cat this week.  This time of year can be a challenge to keep everyone focused on learning.  Pete is a a great way to grab your students attention and keep them engaged.

The FREEBIES in this post are my little Christmas gifts to my sweet readers that stop by to check out School Is a Happy Place.  I really appreciate your visits so much.

Have a groovy week.  ;)