Continuing with the theme... In my last post I showed a blood model that I use to help my students understand that oxygenated blood tends to be a red color and deoxygenated blood tends to have a deep red color with the blood model. blood models Here is another way I use simple materials to demonstrate a concept to my students. I use baby pop-it beads to show the relationship between amino acids and proteins.     Each bead represents an amino acid (I wrote the names of different amino acids on each in permanent marker) and a long chain of them represents a protein.     I keep my eyes pealed for these babies at garage sales because eventually someday I would like to have so many "amino acids" that I can make a protein chain that is long enough to twist and make a shape that would be a better representative of a protein's tertiary structure. What do you use as models in your class? originally posted on ballinwithballing.blogspot.com

     Some of my students have a tough time understanding concepts if it isn't right in front of them. So to make the concept of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood clearer to them, I had them help me make 2 models for our classroom. These models lasted over a week before getting gross (then I flushed them) and saved the mason jars for next school year. The canning jars were filled with water (to represent the plasma), cheerios (to represent the red blood cells because rbc's don't have a nucleus which made the cheerios a good shape), food coloring (red and blue), and marshmallows. The idea came from Pinterest.com Some of you have requested that I put links on my blog where you can buy the items I use so I am going to try to do that for you. Especially those of you who live in a different country than I do...this will help you!  You can buy canning jars here: You only need a small amount of cheerios...I purchased a couple of these Cheerios in a cup conta

I have updated my Open House video! I like using an Open House Video for 3 reasons: 1) Parents can get a better idea about what happens in our classroom if they can see it. 2) I only have 8 minutes with each set of parents and I don't want to forget to tell them anything. 3) Parents that are unable to attend Open House can watch the video on my website from home. You can read about and watch my old Open House Video here: Open House Video 2012. This is the new one: A lot of people have asked how I made it and what software did I use... Here is what you need to make your own video: 1) lots of pictures of your classroom over the years.  I usually have a simple digital camera in my classroom everyday just in case a photo-op comes up. 2) I loaded the pictures into Keynote on my Mac (If you have a PC or prefer Microsoft software you can use PowerPoint) Most teachers already have some sort of a PowerPoint video for Open House...if so, you are    already 1/2