In reading today, we continued our study of fairy tales with the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk.  The students read the story together for a buddy read and we worked on our retelling skills.  We also read a spin off version called Jim and the Beanstalk.

For our STEM challenge today, the students had to design a beanstalk that would hold the most weight out of newspaper, tape, and a Styrofoam plate.

In P.E. this week, the students have been working on bowling.  They are doing such a great job of keeping score!

Our trip to Israel

Yesterday, we traveled by helicopter to Israel.  While in Israel we listened to the countries National Anthem, learned what other countries boarder this tiny country, and learned about their Festival of Light, Chanukah.  We also read some Chanukah stories that resembled the German version of The Gingerbread Man and played the dreidel game.

  Want to learn more about Chanukah?  Here is the PBS video that we watched.  Chanukah-

Happy Friday!!

Today was a very exciting day in our classroom.  To kick off our day we worked with magnets, learning about their magnetic fields.  We then watched a short video on compasses  How Compasses Work  and then explored with real hand held compasses.

In social studies today, we learned reviewed what producers are and learned about the different types of resources (human, capital, and natural)

In the afternoon, we held our first Maker Space.  I would like to thank all of the parents who came out to help us, I could not have done this without you.  Here are some of the stations that the children went to:

Brush Bots-  Video for Brush Bots  


Little Bits-

Website for Little Bits


Website for Squishy Circuits



We also had an art table, computers for coding, catapults, and the kids were able to revisit and tweak their projects from yesterday.

We wrapped up the day with Sumdog and blogging.  I can't wait to see what next week hold for us.  Be on the look out for more photos of our class!

Holidays Around the World

Yesterday, we kicked off our study of holidays around the world.  The kids made cute passports that they needed to board our classroom plane.  We then traveled over the Atlantic Ocean to our first stop Germany.  The children learned that The Brothers Grimm were from Germany.  We also read the story The Gingerbread Man.  The kids then made their own gingerbread man houses in teams.  They did an awesome job!! 

In addition to the gingerbread houses, the students did a STEM challenge where they needed to make a make a structure that would protect a gingerbread man from the falling fairy tale book.  The students learned how to roll recycled paper on the diagonal for a super strong building material and were broken into teams.  We had one gingerbread man come out of the experiment intact. 

Today, we went to Italy and sampled some yummy cookies from this beautiful country.  

Makey Makey

We have been experimenting with a super fun invention kit called Makey Makey.  Makey Makey turns all kinds of fun things into touch pads that connect with the internet.  Our class has turned bananas into a piano and marshmallows into drums.  

Check out this website to see all kinds of cool Makey Makey videos and information.  

http://www.makeymakey.com/

Magnets

In science we are investigating magnets.  

We have learned that a hypothesis is based on facts and that the magnetic field is strongest at its poles.  Yesterday and today, we have been experimenting with what is magnetic and non-magnetic.  

Book logs go high tech

This week our class has begun using biblionasium.  The students can go on line at home or at school to record the books that they have read.

I think this will be a really amazing tool for the children to see how many books they read over the school year.  Another great element is that the children can rate and review books, make suggestions to their friends and join book challenges.