World Wide Research

Many thanks to all the fabulous parents who helped create such delicious and interesting foods from around the world. Each and every child delighted in telling the class all about their dish. I have never seen such brave taste testers.
The children worked very diligently on their individual books, gathering information about their chosen country, and writing the facts without simply copying from the website. Map making quickly became their favorite activity. We learned how to use an overhead projector as well as a bright sunny window to help trace the boundaries of a continent or country.
As the project drew to a close and we began organizing the pages it became apparent to them that a table of contents was in order. Quickly followed by the need for an "about the author" page, which was written in 3rd person because several children noticed that published books sounded as if someone else wrote about the author! Very perceptive, don't you agree!!

Reading Buddies

For the past 2 weeks the 1st and 2nd graders have paired up and shared their just right books together. The second graders were given the task of showing the younger students just what really great independent reading looks like and sounds like. Tomorrow we end with a celebration of sharing and growth as readers. Hopefully the younger children will have felt what it's like to sustain themselves over a period of time while engaged in reading.

The second graders have also been reading the text from our Culture Grams software to a first grader in order to find out new information on the world we live in. Each pair traveled the cyber world and then chose a continent to focus on and eventually narrowed that down to a country. Everyone is hard at work gathering information to present at our World Wide Breakfast!

Oobleck

We concluded our study of the states of matter by creating Oobleck from corn starch and water. Oobleck has unusual physical characteristics, that of a non-Newtonian fluid. The children were investigating to find out when did the oobleck act like a liquid and when did it act like a solid? As well as why they thought it acted that way. Several very perceptive young scientists connected the properties of Oobleck to those of quicksand. Where are you people vacationing?!

Gingerbread People

As soon as everyone had arrived at school we began measuring and mixing all the ingredients for old fashion gingerbread people. The various spices (cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and all spice) curled many noses initially, though they all found it quite intriguing that when all mixed together they smelled rather nice. As it turns out Jessie is a baker extraordinaire! She was a pro at measuring 1/2 teaspoons of whatever and mixing the very difficult to mix dough until it was the correct consistency. Many tried their hand at rolling out the dough and everyone cut out either a girl or boy cookie. Later in the day after reading The Gingerbread Girl we had great fun frosting and decorating our gingerbread people.

Character Quilt

After reading The Josephina Quilt Story the children created character quilt blocks using 1 inch pieces of construction paper. The small squares had to be cut in halves and quarters and then either flipped or rotated to complete each quilt block. Not an easy task as we soon found out! After that they had to figure out which array best suited the number of completed quilt blocks. Finally, following the tradition of each corner using the same quilt block they had to find a way to put all the blocks together in a pattern that was pleasing to the eye. Every completed quilt was different which then necessitated a democratic vote, with eyes closed of course. Here are the final 5 with demo quilts. Can you pick the winner?

What are we thankful for?

The children created lists of things that they were thankful for in Wordle and made colorful word clouds. These word clouds were then placed on mats that were woven out of construction paper. The technology involved in the project was a snap. The most difficult task was cutting the strips of paper to weave! The children read lots of Thanksgiving poems together, some with real voice and tone . . . an impromptu poetry jam. Everyone pitched in to rearrange the tables so that we could all sit together at one giant table for our Thanksgiving Feast. After every ingredient was mixed in the largest pot we could find Mrs. Barfield carved our pineapple turkey. We all enjoyed a bountiful bowl of gorp snack mix and fresh pineapple. We certainly do have a lot to be thankful for!

Fall Images

We all had a wonderful time at the Harvest Party, both school wide and in the classroom. I've never seen children gobble up bowls full of vegetables like they did the day we dined on Stone Soup. Many of them went back for seconds and savored every drop! Many thanks to our gardener, Andrew, for coordinating that effort.
Our most recent 4 Winds workshop was all about beavers. The children loved pretending to be beavers eating their way around a tree (carrot in our case) to see which direction it would fall. This task was much tougher than one would think given that most of the children are sporting a toothless grin these days. They all have a new appreciation for how much work goes into creating beaver dams and lodges.