Recent News

Do you have a special talent? We have lots! Lately on Fridays, kids have been sharing their special talents with the class. We've heard the guitar, seen a crazy chicken dance, heard beautiful writing and seen awesome photographs, just to name a few. Last Friday, Aidan wanted to share his talent of "tortoise whispering" with us, so Mumphrey joined us for the day. Mumphrey is his Russian tortoise and he is really curious and totally adorable. Aidan took him out of his travel cage and he crawled around the circle, greeting everyone. Mumphrey looked like he might want to eat some of Jake's pretzels at one point! Aidan knew a lot about taking care of tortoises. It was fun to have Mumphrey join us for a day.



In math, we've been studying perimeter and area. Perimeter is when you measure around a shape and area is when you measure the surface of it in square units. We started out learning about area by estimating and then covering some larger shapes with squares.


Today we had some area activities to do during math workshop. At one station we traced objects onto square inch grid paper and then figured out the area. It's a little challenging to find the area of objects that are not perfect squares or rectangles!


At the other area activity, we measured the area of large irregular shapes with sticky notes. We used the sticky notes as our square units, because they are the same length on all sides. Some of us used a strategy to figure out the area exactly - we cut the sticky notes to try to make them fit over the left over spaces. Area stations were really fun and helped us practice the idea of area.





We've been enjoying the warmer weather lately!

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Do you know how to make it rain inside or make a cloud in a bottle? We can, because we have a fabulous teacher! Miss O'Reilly put a metal pan over really hot, boiling water and it rained. There were ice cubes in the pan. It rained because the water cycle happened in the boiling of the water and with the metal pan. We needed ice in the pan to cool it down because when something cold meets the water vapor in the air, it condenses, which means that it turns from a gas to a liquid. In a nutshell, it was a fun experiment!

To make a cloud, water droplets need to have something to condense around. That could be a speck of dirt or smoke. That's why we used a match (on fire) in a bottle with warm water in it. We sealed it up and then Miss O'Reilly squeezed it. You also need pressure to make a cloud form. It was really cool to see a cloud in the bottle.




We had our Unit 7 test this week. Tomorrow we have a science test about water. Don't forget to study with the reference sheet.

Last Week's News

We got right down to business after vacation. Our water cycle baggies were still working. We could all see how the water cycle cleans water, because the water that collected at the bottom of the baggie used to have food coloring in it! Science groups can still see evidence of evaporation, condensation and precipitation in their bags.

Did you ever wonder about evaporation? Each science group developed an experiment to see whether the size of a container's opening affects how quickly the water evaporates. We've been observing them over time and will be ready to make conclusions soon.

In math, we've been studying fractions and probability. We can find equivalent fractions, compare fractions, put them in order from smallest to largest and add them. We've used spinners to practice probability. Did you know that you can tell probability with a fraction? There are also words to use like very likely, a 50-50 chance, possibly and certain. In the pictures below, we're performing a cube-drop experiment.




Our classroom has a new teaching station. There is a projector mounted on the ceiling and it displays on a HUGE pull-down screen. The projector is connected to Miss O'Reilly's laptop and we've done all kinds of cool things with it. We've filmed commercials and songs for our book groups and showed them like movies on the big screen. Miss O'Reilly has used the set up to show us articles and little movies. We've had our morning messages projected up there. We've all recorded our book club plans on a class chart. There are so many ways to use our new projector!