​Jill Work, K-8 STEAM curriculum

September

• Read The Power of Yet

• International Dot Day

  • Read The Dot

  • Create Dot images (p. 1)  for a video. Use small round colorful stickers as an option for the Dot. (upload pictures into Adobe Spark; each child narrates their page; entitle the ebook, Not a Dot. Show it to the students when you read Not a Stick.

  • Dot Day Lesson plan

• Intro to Beebots

  • find and go to student names on mats (p. 13)

  • Itsy Bitsy spider with Beebots (p. 11)

  • Start the Beebot skills checklist (p.16)

• Bugs and crawly things

  • Chameleon art

    • Read A Color of His Own​

  • Bugeyes headbands

  • Sequence Caterpillar (p.4)

  • Read The Very Ugly Bug by Liz Pichon

    • Draw/color very ugly bugs

    • Drawing sheet (p.3)

  • Hexbug nanos:

    • https://inspirationlaboratories.com/hexbug-mazes-habitat-ideas/

    • Plastic ornament “vehicles” for Hexbug Nanos”

    • Whose Hexbug in a ball can escape a ring of plastic cups first? A double ring? A ring of cups stacked 4-high??

  • Climbing spider

October

• Pumpkin Chucking balloon launcher

• Read Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds

  • Discuss the various problems in the book

  • Draw (or build) a schematic of a solution to a problem in the book

    • Drawing sheet (p. 2)

    • Draw or build

  • Make creepy carrots and put them all together as a creepy carrot patch

• Beebots

  • Beebots: attach magnet to robot, find and “clean up” items on a mat

  • Sequence a story on a mat (p. 14) Pete the Cat and His New White Shoes

  • Continue the Beebot skills checklist (p.16)

• Blocks-building and cup stacking:

  • longest wall, walls with different materials, wall with peek-a-boos, “brick” wall (no overlap), “brick” wall: all overlapping, highest single tower, highest thick tower, tower balanced on a single cube, cantilevered structure, pyramid, reverse pyramid, circular wall

  • Complete chain reaction skills checklist (p.17)

November

• Cup stacking with Beebots

  • make a tower that will fall as soon as the Beebot touches; make a tower that will takes more than three second to fall, stack cups and used jumbo popsicle sticks to create a doorway for beebot in a 6-level long wall

  • Continue the Beebot skills checklist (p.16)

• Code Beebots for in-class mini-parade

  • Balloons Over Broadway​

• Beebot shapes (p. 26)

  • square, rectangle, L, line retraced. shape search: have picture cards of real object in shape, looks for shapes with certain number of sides or corners, go to all squares on a grid in fewest moves

  • Continue the Beebot skills checklist (p.16)

• Push/pull

  • Experiment/worksheet (pp.5-6)

  • Push/Pull with Beebots: What/how can Beebot push? What/how can they pull?

    • Continue the Beebot skills checklist (p.16)

  • TPT Push/Pull/Roll game with beebots

  • Pull with Beebots (p. 33)

  • Start Force & Motion skills checklist (p.18)

• Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis

  • ​Lesson plan​
  • Not a stick mime activity (use a pencil as a stick and students mime an activity in which it is NOT a stick; students guess what it is)
  • Show the students’ Not a Dot video they made at the beginning of school

December

• Make Gingerbread A-frame

  • Hansel & Gretel and/or The Gingerbread Man​

• Hour of Code: find 1-2 activities to try

  • How to Code a Sand Castle byJosh Funk

  • How to Code a PB&J group exercise

• Gears

  • https://education.lego.com/en-us/lessons/preschool-steam-park/gears#continue

  • https://teachbesideme.com/simple-machines-gear-play-for-kids/

  • https://frugalfun4boys.com/build-working-gears-out-of-popsicle-sticks/

  • http://wiki.dtonline.org/index.php/Modelling_Gears

  • Swim noodle gears

  • Continue Force & Motion skills checklist (p.18)

]