A week of Special Events!

Between Valentine's Day celebrations and the KES Talent Show, we had a very fun-filled week.  On Tuesday, for Valentine's Day, we had a fun little class party.  We also were able to see the kindergarten classes perform their Valentine songs in the morning.  Tuesday was a very fun day and you could definitely feel the love in the classroom.

Passing out Valentine Cards

All of the yummy treats we had at our class party

Getting our Valentine bags ready

On Wednesday afternoon the class was able to see the first dress rehearsal of the KES Talent Show.  There were about 15 different acts that consisted of singing, dancing, gymnastics, and Poi.  The class loved the show and was very impressed with their fellow students.  Many of the students are looking forward to the evening performance of our Talent Show that will be held this coming Wednesday night (Feb. 22nd) at 6:30 pm.

This week we also had one of the school nurses come in and give us a lesson about hand washing.  The school nurses are holding a hand washing campaign in order to help combat some of the germs and illnesses that are continually spread throughout the classroom.  The class had a chance to use a black light and see the germs that were on their hands.  So immediately afterwards, we did some good hand washing practice.  We love that the nurses are so dedicated to our students at KES.

In our classroom, we have also been improving our technology skills.  This week students had opportunities to use our newest program EasyTech through learning.com, as well as continuing our typing skills on typing.com.
This last week was definitely not a typical week in our classroom, but we certainly had fun this last week.  With today (Monday) being a holiday, this next week may not be completely back to normal but it will be closer.  I hope everyone is enjoying the three-day weekend, despite all of the rain!

Data, Graphing, and Science Investigations

I will start by apologizing for not getting a post up last week.  The end of the week hit and I somehow ran out of time, so I told myself I would do it Sunday evening and then that didn't happen either.  So this post, hopefully shouldn't be too long, but will cover the last two weeks in the classroom.
We finished up our Graphing and Data unit in math.  For our culminating project the students created group graphs based on their own surveys.  We had many that asked about favorite movies and we also had a couple groups that asked about other favorites.  The process involved the students creating a survey and then asking that survey among each of the class members and collecting the data.  Then as a group they created a bar graph to represent their data.  The students worked very hard on these and it was quite exciting to see the results.

Surveying the class

The finished products --- all 6 bar graphs

In science, we finished off the investigations involving erosion.  The students were given a tower of sand and they had to create a device to prevent water AND wind erosion.  Each group did not have much to work with.... one piece of string, some foil, one coffee filter, a piece of mesh cloth, 4 large popsicle sticks, and 2 small popsicle sticks.  

After the structures were built, each group was given an eye dropper with water to be the "rain," and each student was given a plastic straw to be the "wind."  Once all of the "erosion" was complete, we removed the structures and the students made observations in their science notebooks about how much of a change occurred between the two types of erosion to their sand tower.

For this current week I don't have near as many pictures as I thought, but we did quite a bit in the classroom this week.  Our new unit in math is focusing on numbers to 1,000 and we have been writing these numbers in expanded notation, word form, and representing them using blocks, sticks, and cubes.  The students have also been working on projects in our Google CS-First curriculum.  We were able to complete activity 3 today using the scratch.mit.edu platform.  It is incredible to think that February is almost half-way done.  The coming weeks we will be doing a lot in the classroom.  

As a side note, a permission slip was sent home this week for our walking field trip to the Kelseyville Post Office.  These permission slips are due on Feb. 23rd.  Also the trip itself is on Thursday, March 9th, which is a minimum day.  The permission slip says we will arrive back at the school at 1pm, but that is not correct.  We will be back to the school by 12pm, so that students will still be dismissed at 12:20.  A note is going home about this on Monday.  So sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Will the Wind Blow?

This week we have had a great time in class.  Our Language Arts story was a biography on Helen Keller and the class seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.  One of our centers this week had the students writing their name in Braille.  First they wrote it in pencil and then they were able to write it using some glue and gems.  The students were quite proud of seeing their names written in Braille.

One of the other things we did with the story of Helen Keller was watch this short video clip from "The Miracle Worker."  The class was very impressed to see how Helen was able to eventually identify things and objects by their names.

Our new unit in math has been on graphing.  We have been learning about all sorts of graphs, including tally charts, line graphs, bar graphs, plot line graphs, and pictographs.  

Each day this week we have taken a new class survey to graph.  We have graphed, "What is your Favorite Subject in School?", "Our Favorite Vegetables," and "How many Letters in our First Names."

Vegetable Tasting for our Survey

Our Data -- Carrots won by a long shot as the favorite, where the least favorite was most certainly broccoli!

In science we have been continuing our study of Earth and Space Science, with a focus on the idea that some events one earth occur quickly while others occur slowly.  This week we discussed wind and how it works.  In partners, the students built a wind gauge.  We took them onto the playground on Thursday afternoon to test them out.  Some of the students thought that our wind gauges were broken because they didn't turn like we had anticipated.  However, Thursday happened to be the one day this week there was almost no wind at all.  So, the wind gauges were not broken and it was determined that they were working exactly as they should since there wasn't any wind that afternoon.  

Watching and hoping for even a little bit of wind!

We also had a character trait assembly this afternoon.  Congratulations to Lexxi and Jacob for earning our Responsibility Awards for the month of January.

Congratulations to our Class Dojo Star for this last week!

Have a great weekend!

Erosion Fun!

With all of the rain we have been having lately, I felt it was the perfect time to start talking about erosion.  My original plan was to walk around the school and find some examples of what might be erosion, but since the rain didn't really let up much this week that might have to be a continuation lesson for next week.  For our main investigation this week, the students were put into pairs and built a sand tower.  The students took a cup full of sand and turned it upside down onto their work surface.  Then each pair of students was given a water dropper and had to add water to their tower.  Some groups counted on drops for a very short time and some continued to count for quite awhile.

Before Erosion

Before Erosion

Before Erosion

Before Erosion

Erosion in Action

Our lowest number of drops before there was a change was 47 and our highest number of drops before there was a change was 201.  We discussed how if you drop the water in the same place the whole time, then that area will erode faster and there will be a change sooner.  The students noticed that if you spread out the drops of water, then it took much longer (and more water) to erode.  As a class we also talked about how each of the towers were shaped differently to begin with, even though they all used the same type of cup to form their towers.  

Later we watched this video on erosion.

We ended the activity with each student eating a lollipop (as discussed in the video) and talked about some facts about erosion.

Yummy Erosion!

Our latest addition with our Class Dojo points, is our Class Dojo Star.  This goes to the student who has the most points at the end of the week.  They get a very special reward and get to sit at a desk all by themselves, where they have their own special supplies and they get to sit in a fun decorated desk.  The student has the choice to sit there everyday of the following week and it really sets them apart as someone who is doing what they need to in class.  Check out our first Class Dojo Star!

Have a great weekend!