Our school-wide theme this year was “Create” – a very appropriate theme for our arts-based school. In response to this theme, our class wrote a song. Rebecca, her sister, and several of their classmates formed a club this year – The Make The World a Better Place Club. They have had fund raisers, given money to various charities, and have completed service projects within our community. We have been so impressed with their passion and determination to make our world better, and we were inspired to write a song that reflected the many ways we could join in with their efforts. We brainstormed ideas, came up with a melody, and a song was born – “Create Our World”. You can click here to listen to the song or download it to your computer.
For our annual classroom treasure project, Mrs. Cathleen Seay helped our class create a beautiful display to represent our song. Students drew pictures that represented the lyrics, and Mrs. Seay decoupaged them onto letters that spelled “Create.” If you look closely, you’ll see the words of our song filling the background of the display. Mrs. Seay put in a LOT of work to make this happen – thank you!
It’s happened again! Just two months ago, Rebecca found a solution to the 10×6 pentomino puzzle. Well, Rylee and Javionna were using their morning exploration time to work with the pentominoes, and they found another solution. This is an incredibly challenging puzzle, and I’m so proud of Javionna and Rylee’s persistence and hard work. Here is as picture of our smart mathematicians…
During the first part of Field Day, we participated in lots of water activities. Needless to day, the kids got very wet! They had a blast throwing wet sponges, catching water in plungers, and using their toes to find treasures in the mud. The weather was great, and the kids had an incredible time. A big thanks goes out to our P.E. teacher, Mrs. Rohrer, for organizing such a fun day!
Here is a video highlighting the second part of our field day. We had a great time on the field doing relay races and tug of war. I love how the kids cheer each other on during the course of each race.
For our Review Writing study in writer’s workshop, students published their work in a variety of ways. Several students enjoyed using a free program called Audacity to make a digital audio recording of their voice. Audacity is a fun and relatively easy to use software (and it’s free!). Students learned to record their voice, add in music, fade music volume in and out, and make general adjustments. Here are several podcasts (audio recordings) created by our students. Just click on the link below to listen, or you can right-click on the links and download them to your computer (maybe add them to your iPod or MP3 player at a later time).
Life cycles are amazing, aren’t they? Right after Spring Break, we started observing these tiny, tiny caterpillars. They were only half a centimeter to a centimeter long when we first got them. We watched them grow and grow and grow – until several of them were an inch long. We watched in fascination as they attached themselves to the top of their cups, forming a “J” shape, and then their chrysalis. At this point, we moved them to our butterfly sanctuary, attaching each one to the side of the net. After a week, our first butterfly crawled out of its chrysalis and began slowly spreading its wings. We were prepared for the red meconium that would ooze out of each butterfly (don’t worry – it’s not blood). More and more hatched – Tyler counted 32 in all! And then it was time to release.
The kids told me releasing our butterflies was happy and sad all at the same time. They were happy for them to be free, but were sad – we had become somewhat attached to them as we observed them each day. This was my first butterfly release, and I was in awe. It was truly a beautiful sight. I think my favorite part of the video is right when I open up the lid of the sanctuary, and the kids make a big gasp and yell “Freedom!” A big thanks goes out to Jonah who filmed the event for us (I did the last minute or so). We hope you enjoy the following video and pictures of this special occasion.
When I posed this question to the class, the answer I got was “dirt.” Nothing too much beyond that. So I brought in a bunch of soil from my backyard, and we started taking a closer look. As you can imagine, we would surprised by what we found. We found earthworms, roots, insects, parts of dead insects, sand, rocks, pebbles, leaves, and much more. Dr. Kaup (Rebecca’s dad) loaned us a microscope that could be attached to my iPad (cool, right?). When you look at the pictures below, you’ll see Miller and other students holding the microscope with everyone leaned in to the center of the table to view the image on the iPad. This enabled us to have a really close view of soil! After observing, we took detailed notes in our science notebook to record our important findings. If you’re viewing this on an iPad, click here to see the pictures.
