Reminders
1. The Cinderella field trip is this Wednesday! (I'm still waiting on two permission slips!)
2. Class pictures are this Thursday!
OK...now to the good stuff...
Language Arts
We are continuing to read 21 Balloons. It is such a magnificent book...full of rich vocabulary and lots of fantasy. I had the kids write a paragraph supporting whether or not they think this book is fiction. We had some great pieces of writing. I am really pushing the kids right now to elaborate...details and examples are key!! This week we also worked in "book clubs". Each child has a different job and they analyze the chapters and then share their thoughts through four different perspectives. It is so motivating to walk around the room and hear the kids discussing this novel.
Science
We have been working with fossils this past week. We studied and sorted fossils early in the week and just yesterday the kids made a cast fossil and a mold fossil. Mrs. Humerick ran the fossil making station and in my room we were gathering information about paleontologists! We watched two different movies...one was fiction with some non-fiction embedded, The Magic Schoolbus: Busasaurus, and the other was very non-fiction entitled, Earth Science: Fossils. The kids took notes and will be writing a piece next week supporting whether or not they'd like the job of being a paleontologist. We will be working on elaboration with this piece as well!
Math
In math our focus has been on statistics and the calculating of averages. I decided we needed to gather some "fun" data, so we took to the cafeteria to fly paper airplanes. The kids kept the data as they attempted their plane's flight. They completed 10 trials of trying to sail their plane over the line 12 feet from the toss. It was a ton of fun and I captured some of it on my cell phone camera...not as good as my other camera, but pictures none the less! Take a look...
We will be leaving Rocks, Soil and Fossils and headed directly into the next Science unit...Populations. We will receive quite a few live organisms and grow some, too! This is another fun unit and is nice as the weather starts to warm up (think warm thoughts...I believe I heard something about SNOW?!?!?!?)
I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I look forward to seeing your lovelies on Monday!
