My students need building blocks, Legos, dominoes, playdough, pipe cleaners, straws, and styrofoam balls to use for STEM bins with science, engineering, and creativity.
$194 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
The school that I work at is a Title I school, where most of the students are bused in from low-income neighborhoods. Almost the entire school receives free or reduced breakfast and lunch, considering most families can't afford to provide sufficient meals every day for their children. My students are wonderful! They are kind, funny, and eager to learn, and their parents care about how they are doing in school and want to support the best they can. My students bring me so much joy every single day, and I want to be able to provide the best classroom environment for them in order to help them reach their learning potentials. I also want to be able to match their excitement about learning within my classroom!
My Project
“I’m finished! What do I do now?” There are way too many times during my teaching day that I hear these words from my students. Sometimes students are instructed to read, write in journals, or spend extra time on the iPad math games. But I keep thinking...
Instead of giving my kids MORE work, I want to give them more MEANINGFUL work.
For first graders, meaningful work needs be hands-on, engaging, and open ended. Children have a natural drive to play, explore, and engineer whenever possible. I want to play into that natural drive.
STEM Bins are plastic bins filled with engineering manipulatives of all kinds, such as Lego's, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, unifix cubes, toothpicks and playdough, popsicle sticks with velcro on the ends, etc. The boxes also contain small sets of task cards on metal rings that picture a variety of basic engineering structures. When students complete their regular classwork, they can take a STEM bin and get a quiet moment to engineer. They use the materials in the box to construct as many different structures on the task cards as they can. And instead of being just “busy,” students are engaged in creative, complex tasks and are encouraged to think like inventors. Kinesthetic learners, spatial learners, and logical learners love exploring the different possibilities for the building materials as they try to construct more challenging structures.
In order to provide this opportunity for my first graders, we desperately need the materials for the bins in our classroom.
LEGO Classic Medium Creative Brick Box 10696
• Amazon Business
$27.99
1
$27.99
Kiddy Dough 36 Pack of Color Play Dough - Mega Modeling & Sculpting Playset With 36 Individual 3-Ounce Cans Exclusive Bulk Party Pack
• Amazon Business
$21.98
1
$21.98
Learning Resources LER0287 Doublesix Dominoes In Bucket
• Amazon Business
$15.92
1
$15.92
Small Wooden Craft Cubes - Unfinished Natural Wood / Mini Wooden Art Craft Stacking Cubes Blocks - 50 Pack -1 Inch, 2.54 Centimeter
• Amazon Business
$12.99
1
$12.99
My Toy House Small Craft Styrofoam Balls, Pack of 70, Assorted Sizes, White Color
• Amazon Business
$10.99
1
$10.99
Colored Craft Stick Natural Jumbo Wood Popsicle Sticks For Diy Crafts Creative Designs 100 PCS 6 Inches
• Amazon Business
$8.99
1
$8.99
Bememo 200 Pieces Pipe Cleaners Chenille Stems 6 mm x 12 Inch for Diy Art Craft, Assorted Colors
• Amazon Business
$8.49
1
$8.49
250 Vakly Paper Medicine Cups, 3/4 oz, (Disposable Souffle Cups)
• Amazon Business
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Petrarca and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
