Friday, February 26, 2016

Western Fun Day

Yee Haw! Our cowgirls and cowboys have been hard at work learning about our state symbols and regions. Throughout the week, we enhanced our lessons about Texas with other subjects such as art and language arts. We created cowboys and cowgirls during an engaging self portrait opportunity.  Here are some pictures of our finished products. 










As an exciting final event this week, we celebrated Western Fun Day where we learned a Texas dance, rode on a pony, and enjoyed some real Texas chili and cornbread. We have included some pictures from our day. You can also watch our show below to join in the fun! Let us know what you think by leaving us a comment! Enjoy!










Motion, Math, and a Multitude of Adjectives

In science this week, we studied motion. We learned how motion is the way that objects can move. We begin this exciting study with an exploration of marbles where we learned that items can move in a straight line, back and forth, round and round, in a zigzag, and up and down. Then, we had an opportunity to explain these different motions by practicing these motions with streamers. Finally, we experimented with building our own paper airplanes and seeing how we could make them move. Here is a video of our exciting explorations. We hope you enjoy the show! Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!


In math, we have been working hard to solve addition problems, using model drawing. This is the math program that they use in Singapore. Research has shown it to be very effective. Model drawing is a way for children to not only solve a story problem but to be able to prove why the answer is true. In order for our students to have a solid foundation in number sense, we find the ability to fully explain your reasoning behind your answer to be a very important skill. Model drawing allows our students the opportunity to practice doing this. Below you can see how we were able to solve problems that we created on our own using the model drawing strategies. 








Finally, in Language Arts, we learned about adjectives and how they are used to describe nouns. We went on a hunt around our room for a favorite noun. Then, we created a Keynote show where we used adjectives to describe our nouns. Here is our show. Check it out and let us know what you think about it by leaving us a comment! 





Friday, February 19, 2016

Legoland

What a wonderful field trip we had to Legoland. This event culminated our unit on tall towers and bridges. After learning about what a building needs to remain strong and how the parts of a building work together as a system, we traveled to Legoland where we created our own spinning tops and explored Legoland. Watch our show to see our adventure. Let us know what you think by leaving us a comment!












Under Construction

During our study of systems this week, we talked about tall towers, bridges, and nests. We discussed what a building would need to have in order to withstand natural disasters and be a good structure for a home. Here are the towers that our children created in class this week. These towers were the inspiration for our towers that we built at the end of the week at Legoland. We have also included pictures of the bridges that we created and the nests that we made to try to save Humpty Dumpty from cracking when he fell off the wall. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think about all of our exciting constructions from this week.