Thanksgiving Fun!

On Monday, we read this month's Book of the Month A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Bateman and Jeff Shelly. After reading this book, the students had several choices for responding to this book: 1) Make a Thanksgiving rap, 2) Make a Thanksgiving commercial discouraging people from eating turkey for Thanksgiving or 3) Making a Thanksgiving ABC book. Here are a few of the student responses that we have worked on over the past two days.

















We hope you enjoy these commercials and raps. There are more to come! Have a Happy Thanksgiving!! :)
-Miss Russell :)

Water Cycle Fun!

For the past few weeks, we have been learning about the water cycle. The water cycle is the movement of water from Earth's surface into the air and back again. As water moves through this continuous cycle, it changes forms. The Sun's energy (heat) causes water to evaporate and become water vapor. Water vapor rises into the cooler air and turns into water droplets or ice crystals. Water vapor in the air that turns back into a liquid is called condensation. Water that falls to the Earth is called precipitation.
On Wednesday, we brought the water cycle into our class....sort of. We set up a demonstration using a heating element (representing the Sun's heat), a tea kettle filled with water and a tray full of ice (representing the cool clouds). We found that when the water evaporated and rose to the "clouds" that condensation was formed and in turn, we created precipitation. Need a visual? Click on the video below.



Also, take a look at the following video for an explanation by one of our friends about what he learned regarding the water cycle.



Learning about the water cycle has been so much fun. We have also learned a really fun song about the water cycle and we will be making water cycle bracelets. I am glad that you were able to take a peek into our classroom. Thanks for reading!
-Miss Russell :)

The Blue Planet

Today we began our new science unit by exploring how much water is on Earth. First, students made their predictions about how much water is on Earth. Next, we used a beach ball globe to represent the Earth.

We tossed the globe 100 times and kept a tally of how many times our right pointer finger landed on water or on land. From this information, we were able to determine a percentage of water compared to land. We did this three times to make sure our information was accurate.

Our experiment concluded that about 72 percent of the Earth is covered with water. Our experiment proved to be almost exactly what scientists say is the amount of water on Earth.

Calendar Math

Here is an example of our daily Calendar Math lesson. The Calendar Math time is always a powerful lesson. We cover many, many topics in this 15-20 minute period.

How many different Calendar Math topics did you count in this lesson?
Enjoy!
Miss Russell :)