GT at Hidden Forest

I hope that everyone enjoys the 4th of July holiday this week. It’s difficult to believe we are already beginning the 7th month of this year! I’ve collected a few nuggets over the past week that might interest you as you look for ways to spend your time this month. First of all, if you happen to be looking for a special gift for a young person in your life, you might want to check out this blog post that I did last Friday on my professional blog.

Also, if you want a great resource for educational videos, you might want to head over here to “The Kid Should See This,” where a mom posts a collection of videos that she finds for her own children from all over the internet.

You can click on the infographic above for some ideas to “Exercise Your Noodle” this summer from Kids Discover.

And, finally, I’ve embedded a very cute “Dog Goldberg” video below. It’s a commercial, but definitely shows the joy of creativity and invention. For more about Rube Goldberg machines, you can visit this post on my professional blog.

Well, apparently our leprechaun traps were good at attracting a leprechaun to our classroom, but not good enough to trap him! He managed to get away with most of our jewels, but he was kind enough to leave some clues to the pot of gold he couldn’t carry. The students used their Detective Thinking to find the pot of gold, and each took a piece of “gold” home – along with their clever traps.

The students worked some more on their Inventor Thinking by making some doodles into pictures. (One student turned a couple of squiggles into DNA!) Then we turned our attention to an iPad app called Pettson’s Inventions. This app is actually more Detective Thinking than Inventor because Pettson has already devised the inventions; the students have to problem solve to put them back together. It’s a bit like reconstructing a “Rube Goldberg” contraption. The students were able to complete all of the levels in the “Lite” version of Pettson’s Inventions 1, but parents might want to download the free version of Pettson’s Inventions 2 – or invest $1.99 in the full version of either one of those. Also, here’s a fun PBS site that follows along that idea: http://pbskids.org/zoom/games/goldburgertogo/rubegame.html

Tag Archives: Rube Goldberg

Happy July!

Kinder Tracks Down a Pot of Gold