Inventors!

Well, I'm a little behind in my posting of units, but I'm just about caught up!

After our Halloween unit, we jumped right into inventors and inventions! We first talked about what inventions are and made a T-chart of inventors we already knew and some we learned about using an inventor puzzle game.

We dug deeper into Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell's lives by reading books about them and watching United Streaming videos about their discoveries. My wonderful teammate Sam made a Venn diagram with facts about each inventor.

We also talked about Benjamin Franklin and his many inventions by reading this wonderful book! I learned a lot from it too!

Finally, I had the kids draw their favorite inventions we had learned about that week.

The second week of the unit focused more on them as inventors. We talked about how inventors invent things in order to solve a problem or make life easier or better. We used several activities from One Extra Degree's Inventor Unit. We talked about patents and why they are important. I posed several problems from the unit and asked the kids to draw in their science journals inventions that would solve that problem.

Our final project was creating their own invention. The kids brought in items from home to create something with and on Friday I just let them loose!

It was hilarious to watch them work and talk to each other. We had some very interesting creations when time was up. I had them fill out a sheet from the unit where they drew and labeled their invention with the materials they used. I then displayed them on my reading table (first time all year its been cleared off! hah!) for a little project show. The kids got to walk around the table and look at each other's creations.

Here are a couple examples up close!

Toy UFO

Cloud Sucker : for when you want a sunny day with no clouds

Chin rest: you can rest your chin in the cup when you get tired of holding your head up

And my all-time favorite: The Laugh-n-shine! Whenever your friend is sad, just swing this in front of them and the smiley face will cheer them right up!

Hope you enjoyed my kiddos fun inventions! The next units I will post about will be immigration/cultures and of course, Thanksgiving! Check out my previous post to see examples of my kids' work from my own Thanksgiving unit!