Silly Putty in the Classroom

Science can be brought into the classroom using silly putty. You can incorporate silly putty into classroom activities like reading and science for starters. Why not bring a little slimy goop into your day to get your students hooked on learning? Here are two favoriteideas on using silly putty in the classroom. Let it be a springboard for finding new classroom activities to bring the science and fun into learning.

source: loveandlaundry.com

Silly Putty in Reading Activities in the Classroom

Looking for a new way {yet, classic} way to make reading fun? Many people will remember the days of using silly putty to copy words from a newspaper. Why not use that to your advantage? Articles, advertisements and comics can lend themselves to helping your students find examples and “copy” them to share. Highlighting and sticky notes work great to grab examples, but you can bring it up a notch if students can actually manipulate the example and bring it to share.

Send students to find examples of great writing hooks, conclusions, similes or proper nouns {whatever you’re working on!}. They bring their silly-puttied copy to share and can immediately smoosh it ready to find more. Talk about motivating! Now, here is the kicker… the print will come out reversed, so you will want to have a mirror handy in most cases – but this makes for a memorable experience!

Silly Putty in Science Activities in the Classroom

Creating a silly putty substance is a great lesson – it bounces and can change shape. Try this recipe with students to make it turn out great! If you haven’t seen some of the cool things you can do with magnetic silly putty, then you’ve got to see this. What kind of predictions can students make before completing any of these experiments?

Silly putty can bring science into the classroom making the interest level high and still help you meet your Common Core standards. I think I’ll personally use this idea with finding sight words with students and I’ve already got my gears thinking about creating some prediction and response sheets for those magnetic silly putty experiments. Think it could generate interest in your classroom?