Here is a little glimpse into what we have been doing for science. I added in a little snow work when we had snow on the ground (but I brought it inside in buckets, it was way to cold to take them out).
We are learning about archeologist's and paleontologists in science. Here our future scientists are digging for dinosaur bones and fossils thanks to the dollar store and some plaster of Paris!
The students had to figure out what tools they needed and how to use them to carefully excavate the treasures inside.
They were so excited when they started to actually "dig down" to the bones, shells and rocks.
Thank you to all of the parents who sent in newspaper! We are finally able to start our volcano building project. This will take us a few weeks, but everyone is so excited to start constructing our paper mache volcano!
The students have been doing research by consulting our volcano books in our classroom library. They study the pictures (for form) before starting to shape their volcano.
These girls are working together to create the volcano. The children are in charge of negotiating how many people can work at this center at a time, they refill the glue and water mixture themselves and they cut up the newspaper themselves. They are learning to work in cooperative groups, negotiate tasks, solve problems and divide responsibilities. And they just think they are having fun!
This volcano will be reading to paint on Monday. Some of the students are thinking about adding trees and dinosaurs. They thought about adding more scenery after researching through the volcano books in our classroom library. They are so smart!
Another very popular science activity is working with the test tubes and performing experiments using different colored water, vinegar, salt, baking soda and the eye droppers. Thank you again for all of the support to get these materials donated through our Donor's Choose projects this year!
Here is a little something I found on the internet that some of you might like to print out and place into your kiddos lunch boxes/backpacks. I thought they were too cute!
Here is another really relevant piece of information for you. This explains why you are always getting those "don't forget to read with your child" emails from me every week!
Sorry I am a little late posting these photos. We had a great time celebrating our 100th Day of School. I was looking back at picture from the beginning of the school year and I am amazed at how much they have grown! Let me share some of the pictures of their projects with you and some of their writing.
I wanted to show you some of their illustrations and some of their writing from the 100th day unit. They are so creative. I really enjoyed reading their homework project and adding their drawings.
I don't think I am going to age well! Me, being 100 years old.
This was their welcome to the 100th Day of School.
I love the homework they did with you at home. At school we drew pictures of ourselves at 100 years old. They all did a fantastic job of picturing themselves in the future.
I love the facial hair!
I think lots of the kids are planning on glasses when they are 100.
Many of the children really channeled their inner "grandma" and "grandpa" for their pictures.
Ok, this was the funniest one ever. This little guy said he drew himself as an old French guy. I have no idea how he came up with becoming French when he was 100! I like the neckerchief too!
This girl is rocking the bun on top of the head!
I love the detail on his cane! They are also starting to add settings to their pictures without being reminded to add detail.
These next pictures show what they would buy if they had 100 dollars. These were too cute!
She wants to buy a talking monkey!
I hope you enjoyed this little peek into our 100th day!
We are in a prehistoric state in our room. We are learning so much about volcanoes and about dinosaurs. These two subjects have taken over our reading, our writing, our math and even our letter of the week. Let me show you some of the highlights from the first two weeks of February.
The children are learning about chemical reactions in this science lab. They combine baking soda and vinegar (thank you parents for sending it in) and watch the chemical reaction that is created.
We are doing this science lab because this looks like a volcano erupting. The kids cannot get enough of this lab.
The children here are developing fine motor skills by using the eye dropper (which we got through the Donors Choose project you helped to fund). They are also negotiating how to take turns, how to share resources and they are expanding their vocabulary and their speaking and listening skills by discussing what they are observing.
This is a neat dinosaur themed math game using geometric shapes to create patterns and pictures.
We watched several short videos about volcanoes from Discovery and National Geographic Kids. I also shared with them books and pictures I brought back from my trip to Hawaii. I was lucky enough to go to the Volcano National Park. I even have some lava rocks which you will see later in this post. This is one child documenting what she learned from some of the books and videos we have been using for our research.
This child is studying a lava rock and documenting what she observes (sorry it is so blurry).
This child is very closely examining this lava rock from Hawaii. They had lots of questions. Seeing the rocks up close helped them to understand that lava is hot, melted rock, and when the lava cooled it formed these rocks.
This child is examining another lava rock.
This child referred to himself as a vulcanologist!
These children are building a volcano in the block area. We also talked about symmetry.
This child is using the dinosaurs to sort them and arrange them from largest to smallest.
We are having a ball with this unit of study. I have brought in lots of books on these topics from the St. Charles County Library. We have some very serious researchers in our room. I love it when they find out something new about either a dinosaur or about a volcano. They are devouring the books and dinosaurs and volcanoes are starting to show up in writing workshop in some of the books they are writing.
Next, when we get more newspapers donated, we will start constructing our volcanoes. We are all so excited! Check back soon to see our latest.
I wanted to share a few pictures of the Friendship party and some of there Valentine Boxes. Thank you to the H's, the C's and the S's for putting together the party and being there to help. We all had a great time.
Pin the Lips on Ms. Arrendale
I love the art work. I look good!
Round and Round we go, where we stop, nobody knows!
Now I have lips in my eye. This was a fun game! We all laughed and laughed!
The was called "heart-a-stack". The kids worked so hard on staking all of the hearts. It was really hard!
I thought I would share what we are watching in class with you.
These two videos support the rule of "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking". We are starting to get into more complex rules during word work to help them read more difficult text and understand/decode the words.
They love these silly Numtums. Whatever helps our visual learners "get" the numerical concepts we are working on works for me. We also love these money songs!
One of our all time favorites is still Alpha Blocks. They are amazing and the kids really get into the episodes and remember so much about the letter sounds and blending. This is one of their favorite episodes.
I know many of you use the learning videos at home to support your child's education. Here is what we are watching this month! Enjoy.
We use this counting by tens song by Have Fun Teaching. We also use the counting by fives song and counting by twos song as well during math workshop. You can find these on You Tube.
The children still love the Alphablocks and this is a wonderful tool to use to support letter sounds, blending sounds, learning about the ch, sh, th and wh sounds which can be very hard for young children to master. Just type in Alphablocks into You Tube and let your child watch several of these short, engaging mini lessons which support their developing reading skills. This is by far the children's favorite thing to watch as a brain break during reading workshop.
We used this You Tube video to learn about how baby penguins learn how to walk. The children each got a turn standing on my feet like a baby penguin while I walked around with them. This very short video is way too cute!
This is one of the video songs we use to practice our rhyming skills. Beware, once you hear it it will be stuck in your head for the rest of the day!
Next week our letter is Ee. Each week we watch the letter video from Have Fun Teaching to explore the sounds, shape, words and rules for each letter. If you find your child is having difficulty with a few of their letter sounds let them watch the letter song for that letter. The videos are short, the tunes are catchy and the kids become very focused on the video.
Our other favorite little video to support our letter of the week learning is from StoryBots on You Tube. These videos are also a wonderful tool for vocabulary expansion.
I hope these video links will help you have fun with your child while you support their learning. Thank you for exposing them at home. The more exposure they have to these critical foundational skills the better they will become in all academic areas. If you have any songs or videos that you are aware of to support reading, writing or science concepts please share them with me!
