Using a Globe to Practice Probability

I use a beach ball globe to practice probability during our map unit. We sit in a circle and toss the beach ball to each other. The "catcher" reports whether their right thumb landed on water or land when they caught the ball. Then I use tally marks on the board to keep track of where our thumbs land the most. Before we begin we made predictions of which would win - land or water. Since we had previously made paper plate Earths that showed 3/4 water and 1/4 land they all guessed that water would win. The kids loved this game, and asked to play it for several days in a row afterward!

Finishing Our Globes

Here are our final products! We followed the Scientific Method and completed our projects to create our very own globes. (Continents not to scale!) We had been taking notes on a sequencing page about the steps of this project, then we edited those notes into formal writing so that others could read what we did to make these globes. This is always a fun project in my class, the kids LOVE it, and the other kids in school want to come and make their own globes too! We displayed our globes at our annual Achievement Fair, so pictures show the final products and our display.

Day 3: Paper Mache Globes

Our globes have hardened in shape, and now we are painting the water on the "Earth". We had fun, and got a little messy again. Some of us had blue hands, faces, hair, and clothes at the end of this day. We will paint one more coat of blue water, then on Monday we will add on the continents.

Day 1: Making Paper Mache Globes

Today we began our science experiment. We went through the scientific method, using the adorable printable cards from Ladybug Teaching Files. Get your own copy here:

http://ladybugsteacherfiles.blogspot.com/search/label/Science

We researched different websites for directions on how to create a paper mache globe. Our hypothesis was that when we mixed the flour and water it must make some kind of glue to make the newspaper stick to the balloons. Our plan is to finish this experiment by completing one step each day this week, so our final globe product will be ready for showing off on Friday. The pictures above show us working on covering our balloons with the first layer of paper mache. Tomorrow we will complete the second layer. We sure got messy, but we had TONS of fun!