Keep Your Kids Clean

So while at Walmart the other day, yes I am there all the time getting things for school and whatnot, I was in the soap aisle getting some hand sanitizer for my classroom.  I let the kids use it, it doesn't bother me, because frankly I'd rather spend money on that than have them sneezing in my face and getting me sick.  I had seen something on Pinterest, where I get some great ideas because I'm not very creative, and I thought it was super cute.

Instead of buying one huge bottle of hand sanitizer, I bought two small ones.  I already had some very brightly colored paper in my room so all I had to do was cut a piece to size, labeled it the appropriate gender, and taped it down to the front of the bottle.

The idea here is that if a girl needs to go to the bathroom, she will take the pink bottle of hand sanitizer, put it on her desk, go to the bathroom, come back, squirt some hand sanitizer (because how many kids actually wash their hands??), then put it back by the door.

It makes it really nice because sometimes things get crazy in the room, especially when we're doing projects and people are all over the room, if I see the bottle on someone's desk, I know, "Oh, Susie is in the bathroom, that's right."

Again with 9th graders, I thought they'd think it was kind of babyish, but they LOVED it.  I mean what kid doesn't like to use Germ-X anyways??

Lava Lamps!!!

So over the past two weeks I've been having the kids bring in clear, empty water, soda, whatever bottles for us to make homemade lava lamps!  We've had some interruptions with things going on at school, and I was sick one day and out another for a training, and we had a professional development day, and of course the kids would forget their supplies, so needless to say we didn't get this done in a very timely fashion.  BUT we did get to do it today and it was a huge success, the pictures really don't do it justice at all.


If you want to try lava lamps in your class, or even at your house because they were super easy, there are only a few supplies you will need.

• 1 clear plastic bottle WITH a lid, a 16.9oz water bottle works the best, but 20oz works pretty good too, we tried a big Gatorade bottle, but it was a fail

• cooking oil (vegetable, canola, sunflower, olive, etc...)

• food coloring

• Alka Seltzer tablets, I used Walmart brand and they worked just fine

Here is the procedure:

1. Fill your bottle up 3/4 the way with oil (about to the top of the label worked great, be sure to tear the label off though so you can see!!)
2. Choose your color and put several drops of food coloring in
3. Fill the bottle ALMOST the rest of the way with water, leave a little room at the top
4. Add ONE alka seltzer tablet and QUICKLY put your lid back on
5. ENJOY!!!!!  you may need to swirl it around a little bit if you try to make teal or orange and want your colors to mix

The kids really loved this, and here are some pics of our finished products.  Blue, lime green, and orange :)

One thing I definitely want to do next year to up the rigor of the experiment is to have a control and many different variables.  Such as using less oil and more water, and does a certain color work better, does namebrand Alka Seltzer work better than the generic, does a certain kind of oil (canola, olive, vegetable, etc.) work better, does a certain brand (Crisco, Great Value, Kroger, etc.) work better, and I'm sure there are tons more we could think of.  I used this in my 9th grade class, but I think it would be great for any grade level and even at home if you're bored one day!!!

Anchor Charts

So I've been perusing the internet in search of things and I stumbled upon Anchor Charts, the idea behind them is to "anchor" the main idea into your kids' heads.  So we're starting a unit on space and 2 of our vocabulary words are "terrestrial planets" and "gas giants" so I decided to make an anchor chart for those two concepts to make it a little easier to understand. 


So it's almost kind of like a Venn diagram without the comparison part in the middle.  I used butcher paper to make it on and then had to color it in of course, because it wouldn't have been the same without the planets on it.

Lesson Plan Format

Hey all, my name is Kat and I'm a 9th grade physical science teacher.  I want this blog to have things that I use in my classroom that make my life easier and maybe it will help someone else out there too.  I'll post cute ideas I have or even pics from lessons that my kids love.  Follow me on Pinterest!!!

What I'm posting today is a temymplate for a daily lesson plan format.  I personally think this is so much easier to use than trying to fit everything I'm doing that day into the itty-bitty box in the Squibbs lesson plan books, you know what I'm talking about!!  So here is a template I've made, if you want a copy, e-mail me at klparker@access.k12.wv.us and I will send it right out!!  The only thing you would have to change would be the day of the week at the top and possibly change "Do Now" to "Bell Ringer."  Do Now is just what we call them at my school.  Hope you enjoy and I'll be posting again soon!!