Andy Armadillo and Shyla visited our classroom to celebrate Read Across America. Shyla read a Dr. Seuss story to the class while Andy quietly observed. He was kind enough to let each student give him a hug and to pose for a photo. At the end of the day, Milan's dog visited class, too! It was a fun day.

As you can see, students had great fun with their water cycle experiment. They used eye droppers to evaporate water from a water source. We talked about how the water vapor is in the air but is invisible until it hits cold air and becomes a cloud. Students dropped water onto their clouds until the clouds could hold no more water and would begin to rain. In the morning, we watched the Rimrock Opera put on a performance about the dangers of smoking. It was a great message that I know they understood because many of them wrote about it in their journals. Jared drew a wonderful picture in his journal of two sets of lungs: one pink and healthy set and one that was black from smoking.

We are talking about different types of dwellings this week, so I started the day by reading A House is a House for Me. Students brainstormed what things are houses for other things. They came up with some good ones, including, "A flower is a home for a fairy." Awww... Cute, huh? In math, students had to evenly distribute items to different numbers of people. They learned that the more people there are, the less everyone gets! We had P.E. in the classroom today because there was an orchestra concert in the gym. For social studies, we looked at dwellings from different parts of the country. We learned about wigwams, igloos, adobe homes, and yurts. I gave the students a hint about tomorrow's science lesson by telling them that they'll do a weather experiment in which they get to use an eyedropper. They were intrigued.

I just posted a link to a Dr. Seuss site in honor of Read Across America day March 2. See Cool Sites for Kids below.

If you looked in your child's backpack this afternoon and wondered about the cut up paper plate, it was a "fraction pizza." Students were asked to color a pizza with all their favorite toppings. The boys divided their pizzas into fourths and the girls divided theirs into halves. You could continue the fraction lesson by asking your child how much of the pizza remains if you take away a slice. Students have filled up their writing journals so we were happy when new journals arrived today. Students were free to choose what they wrote about, but I asked them to be very deliberate about leaving spaces between words and to use lowercase letters. If you notice your child writing in uppercase letters at home, please encourage them to write "the big kid way" (in lowercase letters).

We were able to watch a Michael Jackson tribute concert by the 4th-6th graders this morning. Later, we read some books that explained fractions. Students learned that the bottom number of a fraction is called the denominator and that fractions represent equal parts of a whole.

In math we learned about symmetry. Students demonstrated their understanding by folding a piece on construction paper in half, drawing a design on one half and making a symmetrical design on the other half. They even used mirror images! They are amazing! We did an art project this afternoon that required students to cut shapes such as rectangles for buildings, squares for windows, and triangles for roofs and then paint the reflection of of the buildings in a body of water below the buildings. The results are stunning.