Field Trip and Family

This last week in class has been very busy, but also very exciting.  We spent a lot of our week talking about firefighters, fire stations, and fire engines to get ourselves prepared for our field trip to the Kelseyville Firehouse on Thursday.  We walked to the fire station and got to see many different things.  The class had the opportunity to look closely at a firefighter's gear.  We had a chance to see the different tools that are on the fire trucks and they also were able to get in to the back of the ambulance.  We walked through the fire station and saw where the firefighters sleep, eat, work, and play when they are not helping people and fighting fires.  At the end of the field trip, each student received a fire helmet and a coloring packet on fire safety.  It was such a wonderful trip and it was a great way to finish up our study on our story "Fighting the Fire."

The class at the fire station

Serenity with her Uncle Joey, Kelseyville Fire Chief 

Looking at tools

After our field trip, we began our preparations for our Grandparent/Special Person Event.  As a class we made bread and butter to serve our guests.  Making the butter went very well with our recent studies in science about states of matter, specifically liquids and solids.  The students realized that their heavy cream started as a liquid and changed to a solid state after shaking it in a jar in a group effort.  While we were making the bread, we talked about how baking the bread in the hot oven is also changing the bread using heat, and again going from a liquid to a solid.

 
Making butter from heavy cream. Shake, shake, shake!
 
                                                                    The finished product
         
 
 
Kneading bread,

Here is a link to the recipe for the bread:
http://www.somethingedible.com/index.php/food_drink/entry/four_ingredients_a_zip-top_bag_and_the_patience_of_a_saint_baking_bread_wit/

Our big Celebration Across Generations day with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family members was today and was a huge success!  The students had made a book for their special person with important things that each does with their special person.  The students introduced their special person to the class and then they got to read their completed book to their guest of honor.  We ended our celebration by eating our delicious bread and butter.  It was so great to have our class making memories with their own family members in our classroom.

As if our week wasn't busy enough, we also had an experience today where the students got to play with Spheros.   We have been working on some basic programming and coding for some of our STEAM Fridays over the last few weeks.  So, today they had a chance to play with a robotic ball that they controlled ("programmed") with the use of an iPad.  Thank you LCOE for helping us out with that one.  We had a great time with the Spheros and the class looks forward to using them again.

Spheros in action!

The last thing the class did today was become the teacher themselves.  The students in my class taught the students in Mrs. Sonneville's class how to do some basic coding using the website kodable.com  This was great because it gave my class another chance to use kodable.com and it also helped them see how they can also teach things to other people.  

After such a busy week, I am pretty sure we are all ready for a week off!  Have a wonderful and Happy Thanksgiving!