My students need supplies such as snap circuits, motors, and clay, for various electrical circuit projects, which will promote innovation and excitement during the culmination of our magnetism and electricity unit.
Our rural school has Pre-K through 5th grades in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Due to the fact that a good portion of the jobs in our area are tourism based service industry jobs, our free and reduced lunch numbers increased from 50% to over 70% last year. Many families struggle to put food on the table and gas in the car.
I am fortunate to have a great group of kids; they are curious, empathetic, willing to try new ideas, and work hard.
Every day I have high expectations for ALL of my students, and every day they willingly strive to meet those expectations. Together we have been able to accomplish so much, and we're not done yet!
My Project
Our Magnetism and Electricity unit has always been a high interest unit for 4th graders at our school. Using light bulbs, motors, batteries, switches and wire, students work collaboratively to build various circuits. For years the end of the unit project was to electrify a cardboard house. Students then spent several days decorating their houses with fabrics, pictures and cardboard and craft stick furniture. Although the students loved these houses, the parallel circuits lighting the houses were pretty basic, there was no innovation and little challenge. The fun was in the decorating….
Help us move away from 'no innovation' and 'little challenge'!
With the supplies requested here, we will be able to offer a multitude of projects for students to choose from. Being able to offer Squishy Circuits (using LED’s, Playdoh and clay), Wiggle/Scribblebots (using motors and AA batteries), Gami-Bots/Bristle-Bots (using vibrating motors and coin cell batteries), Paper Circuits (using LED’s, coin batteries and copper tape), Snap Circuits (with projects such as making a sound activated switch, a lie detector and adjustable light controller), and Circuit Mazes (with 60 logic building puzzles) will allow students to take their knowledge of circuits to a whole new level! These materials will provide challenges promoting collaboration, differentiation, high excitement and motivation in our classrooms.
Many of these supplies will be one-time purchases, which we will be able to use for years to come.
PLEASE NOTE: THESE SUPPLIES WILL BE FOR BOTH 4TH GRADE CLASSROOMS IN OUR SCHOOL.
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