sheep Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

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This week’s STEM activity explores double pulleys. We created a pulley system that uses counting sheep to play some simple machines games. You may remember that we created a fixed pulley activity that went along with the book Little Blue Truck a few week’s ago. These simple machines games are based on the bookTime for Bedby Mem Fox.

Simple Machines Games

Building the Pulley System

Before your children play the simple machines games, you will need to build the pulley system. Let me walk you through how to put it together.

Supplies

*We used awood rolling pins to create our pulley.

Creating the Pulley

You will need to start by placing painter’s tape around your rolling pins. The tape will be placed about five inches in on left and right side of the rolling pin. It will create a walled area that will help keep your yarn from heading to either end of the rolling pin.

Then you will cut a piece of yarn that is about 18 inches long. You will tie the two ends of the yarn together to make a loop. Next place a rolling pin at either end of the loop.

The chip clip will be placed on the yarn. The coil that helps open and close the clip will sit right on top of the yarn.

Finally cut out the counting sheep out of the printable.

Simple Machines Games

Find and Share a Number with a Friend

This game is played with two people. One person will call out a number. The other person will find that number and place it on the clip. Then they will turn their rolling pin forward until the sheep on the clip reaches the other player. Who will take the sheep of the clip.

Find and Share a Number Solo Version

One child will search for the number one. They will place it on the clip. Then pick up both rolling pins. Next they will roll one pin forwards to get the number to travel to the other rolling pin.

They will repeat this process until the have moved all the numbers from one to ten using the pulley system.

Counting on from a Sheep Number

This game can be played by one or two children. The number one will be selected and added to the chip clip. As the number is moved from one rolling pin to the other, all the numbers after that number up to 10 will need to be said by child or children.

More STEM Activities

Spider Web Hanger Exploration

STEM Activities with #2 Pencils

3-Ring Binder Car Ramps

What fun it is to create easy valentine’s crafts that can be display in your kitchen or classroom! Earlier in the week I shared some My Heart is like a Zoo crafts. Today I want to share an “I Love Ewe” craft is just that kind of craft. It could easily be created and then hung up. It would be fun to create this Valentine’s Day craft at the beginning of February and have it up until Valentine’s Day.It might be fun to send to someone you love and they could display your wonderful sheep with a heart. They may find that they have a smile forming on their face every time they pass by it.

This is one of those easy valentine crafts to put together that uses simple cutting skills and a folding technique. JDaniel loved the folding technique. When I showed him the sample I made, the first thing we asked me to do was to show him how to fold the arms and legs.

Let’s get started with how we crafted it:

Gather the supplies you need:

Black construction paper
White construction paper
Red construction paper
Black crayon
Glue or glue stick
Scissors

Putting These Easy Valentine Crafts Together:

Cut out two cloud shapes out of the white construction paper. You may want to make a longer narrow cloud shape for the sheep’s head. A wider cloud shape would probably best for the sheep’s body.

Before we did anything else we created an outline on the edges of the cloudy sheep boy parts with a black crayon. It was done to help define the edges of the paper.

We then cut a nose, eyeballs and ears out of the black construction paper. The outside area of the sheep’s eyes was cut out of white paper too. The outside area eyes was outlined in black.

Then the sheep’s face was put together. The head was glued on the body. The eyes, nose and ears were glued in place next.

We were finally ready to use that fun fold technique that JDaniel wanted to learn. All you need to start is two narrow strip of black paper. The strips are glued together to form a right angle. Once the corners of the two strips were glued where the strips meet . Once they were glued in place we turned the strips over and you can start folding. We folded the vertical strip down across the corner or vertex. Then the horizontal strip was brought across the corner. If the strip was on the left to start with, it is now of the right. Repeat this process until you reach the ends of the paper strips. You will then glue the ends together. We did this process four times to create the sheep’s arms and legs.

Next we glued the arms and legs in place on the sheep. You may want to try moving them around before you glue them down to make sure they are right where you want them. It would a shame to have to move them later and risk tearing the paper.

We then cut out a large red heart for the sheep to hold. The message “ I love Ewe” was written on the heart. With the message done we glued the heart to the sheep’s arms.

Sheep have hooves so; we cut four hooves out of black construction. Then we glued them onto the springy hand and feet. Our hands were wrapped around the heart. You may decide that your sheep’s hands need to be displayed differently.