Flowers Feed the Soul

I was overwhelmed by all the beautiful flowers I received this morning. I wanted to quickly get them into water, but I also wanted to stay on schedule so my "arrangement" of them leaves much to be desired, but they are beautiful just the same. Thank you all very much!

You child will definitely remember this week's Bible verse. We have enjoyed singing along to a video I found on YouTube. I added a new element today with the signs. See what you think.

Cloudy with a Chance Stories

Students have been working hard on using adjectives in their writing. I read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs to them. They made me laugh because they said the book was nothing like the movie. I think they were shocked to learn that the book came out first! I told them they would be writing a three course meal story, based on the book, and asked students to brainstorm adjectives for food. As a pre-writing activity, I set out 12 different posters, labeled with the noun I wanted them to describe.

I set a timer for 5 minutes, and asked the students to go from poster to poster, adding an adjective in front of the noun. When time was up, I read their great descriptions and then reminded them to put an adjective in front of the food that would be falling out of the sky in their story. The Voice Thread video is a sampling of their unedited work. Parents, your students are anxiously awaiting your comments.

Going Buggy

Yesterday we read a play about bugs which provided lots of information about several insects and how they eat. The most interesting, or the ones that students remembered the most were (believe it or not) the housefly and the grasshopper. The housefly eats dead animals and animal droppings...eewww!.  The grasshopper spits brown liquid at enemies to make them back off. We learned that insects have 3 body sections: the head, thorax, and the abdomen. Today, we learned how butterflies "eat." Instead of eating, butterflies get their nourishment from drinking. They have a long, narrow tube in their mouth called a proboscis that acts as a straw. They drink nectar from flowers. I gave each student a cup (flower) with water (nectar) and they drank through their straw (proboscis). Students also designed their own bug and made a Playdough model of it. They also had the opportunity to build a super bug on a website and print their bug's "stats."

Catawba Science Center

We really enjoyed our field trip to the Catawba Science Center yesterday! Our first stop was in a science lab where we learned about matter. Matter is anything that takes up space and has weight (mass). Even air takes up space, as we could see by filling up a balloon. Students donned goggles as they conducted experiments such as making snow, which required adding tiny drops of rubbing alcohol to a mysterious liquid. They also filled a balloon with baking soda, stretched the balloon over a beaker of vinegar, shook the balloon, and watched what happened. There were squeals of delight as the balloon filled. Several students were able to tell us that the balloon was being filled by a gas produced by adding the baking soda to the vinegar!

Our next stop was the planetarium, where we watched a movie titled, "Zula Patrol: Under the Weather." It was an entertaining cartoon, but was extra special since we watched it on the planetarium ceiling. After the movie, we learned a little bit about stars and constellations. See if your child can remember the scientific name for the North Star.(It is Polaris.) We were able to take a brief tour of the aquarium before boarding the bus for the long ride back to school. We arrived back ten minutes before dismissal.

Spring Break Caterpillar-Sitting

The caterpillar babysitting job over Spring Break was a lot easier than expected since none of the ones I brought home lived! From what I've heard so far, it sounds like no one else's caterpillars lived, either. Not to worry--we still have time to order more caterpillars. I hope they came with a money back guarantee!

I haven't posted anything for a while, so I wanted to share some pictures from the Easter egg hunt. I also came across an interesting site that will keep your kids busy during the summer. It is called Smithsonian Quests. The site has 100 free self-directed, project-based activities for all ages. Students can earn badges while learning about subjects from art to outer space. Just click on this link to sign up http://shout.smithsonianquests.org The password for our class is vQWd73XuM.