Never a dull moment in our class... that seems to be the motto for this year! One thing I love about my job is that on Monday you'd never guess what will happen by Friday. :)
This week began with with continuing our study of the Earth and geology. We learned about gems and minerals and mining, and then went cookie mining! We used pick axes (toothpicks) to mine gems (M&M's) out of the dirt (cookies). Then we graphed the gems we found! Of course we ate the gems afterwards!
We are working hard on becoming independent writers, including the skills of being able to chop of up words, hear the individual sounds, and translate them into letters. We call this "kid spelling". And once kids achieve this milestone and realize they can write phonetically, even if it isn't the proper spelling,they are so excited to be able to communicate this way! Having your child write notes and letters and signs at home is a great way to practice these skills! Here the kids are enjoying some small group time with our wonderful aides to practice independent kid spelling...
We had one of the subs in the school, Brandon, come in and teach the kids how to use a range finder and practice skills like estimating and measuring yards and feet. They enjoyed hearing about the application of this kind of math in hunting and construction!
In science we had a yummy lesson on the rock cycle! We used Starbursts to create layered sedimentary rock. Then we squeezed and twisted it to become metamorphic type rocks. Then we put those "rocks" into the oven to create igneous rocks! We looked at real examples of each kind of rock as we went along. Edible science is the best!
We got to visit with the cutest puppy this week! Mr. Larrabee brought in his new Bernie Doodle puppy named Asha to see the kids. She was so mellow and cuddly! Everyone loved her.
Ms. Michele from the greenhouse brought us a preying mantis egg sac to hatch out in our room. It hatched the very next day, with hundreds of preying mantises crawling out! It was so much fun to watch them hatch! Then we released them in the greenhouse to help eat some of the aphids. The kids got to pick a radish while they were there. The greenhouse is looking amazing! Go Michele! This is just the beginning of the creatures we plan to have in our room this spring... ladybugs, butterflies, and ducks still to come!!!
Friday afternoon was the perfect time for a paper airplane STEM project. We built a glider from a kit, and then the kids made their own paper airplanes, and we had a great time tweaking them to fly better. Some kids cut in flaps or tried different designs. They have been so excited about planes ever since our field trip to Forty Mile Air, so this was such a fun project!!! It kept going all through P.E., when the kids were flying and chasing their planes all around the gym, and got the other grades in on it too!!!
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