Free Science Plans Using Magic School Bus DVDs

As I researched my options for my son's 2nd grade science, I poured over book after book and option after option. Many just seemed way over his head, some were just too pricey and others, well, just looked like they sucked all the fun out of science! All the while, my little man continually asked, "Mom, can I watch one more Magic School Bus, pleeeeease?" Hmmmm, lightbulb!

So, I spent HOURS pulling together a plan for him to use these DVD's as a basis for his science curriculum.  First, I purchased the entire 40 episodes of MSB for less than $40. Or, if you already have a subscription to stream Netflix, you can view all these episodes there!!! A wonderful reader has posted a list in the comments below to to let you know where to find each episode. Thank you, Tawnya!

I have included a reference on the plans for which disc to use each week, what the topic is, a book to read aloud, a project or experiment, a BrainPop Jr video (optional), and a writing assignment for each topic. The books, I request from my local library, the experiments are inexpensive and easy to do (most from Pinterest, yeah Pinterest!) and the writing assignments are all from great teachers and bloggers on Teacher's Pay Teachers - nearly all of them free! I even lined up some fun activities by the season like light at Christmas time, hearts and circulation in February and constructing a leprechaun trap in March.

A glimpse of ANTS week materials

This is not a full-proof curriculum, and comes with no guarantees. I just thought that after all the work put into this, it would be a shame to have it used for only one child! So this is my gift to all of you! I believe I have triple-checked all the links, but if you happen to run into an issue, please leave me a comment below and I will be sure to correct it.

If you would like to try this out for yourself, grab a copy of the file HERE

If you decide to use the plans, either in part or as a whole, would you be so kind as to leave a comment below?

Pumpkin Investigation

We decided on Halloween morning, to make things festive and do a little 'Pumpkin Science' I found a number of little sheets online that had the kids do a variety of different activities. First, they drew pictures of what their pumpkins looked like to them. It was so interesting to see the different interpretations from each child.

Then we measured how many blocks our pumpkins were tall.

We counted how many stripes were on our pumpkins.

 I asked all three kids if they thought the pumpkins would sink or float in water. I to "sinks" and 1 "float" from my Ice Princess. She, of course, was correct. Then we went on to discuss the concept of density and predicted what they thought was the reason that the pumpkins floated.

At last, we cut those little buggers open to see if we were right. The air surrounding the guts inside kept the pumpkin afloat. So then we cleaned them out and counted the seeds. 

 Tonka and I sorted the slimy seeds into groups of ten and then counted by 10's to find out how many seeds we had. We came up with 91 seeds in our tiny little pumpkin! Ice Princess had 135 and Cowgirl counted 135 as well.

Then my smartie pants Cowgirl asked if the pumpkins would float if we filled the hollow spot with water. We didn't think so, but when we tried it, it did. Hmm? Wow! Ok, so I'm guessing that the pumpkin 'flesh' must have some air pockets as well. Live and learn, Mom!