The Peabody Museum

I can't tell you how proud I was of the class today. They were interested, respectful, excited about their learning, and all around wonderful kids! We had a great experience at the museum.

Mrs. Markos Made Coffee Cake

During one of our writing lessons, Mrs. Markos told the story of her mom's coffee cake. We were writing about a family tradition, and she went into such great, delicious detail about this coffee cake that the class has been begging her to make it for us. And, guess what? Today was our lucky day!

Although she swears that it's not as good as her mom's, we thought that the treat was absolutely delicious. Thanks, Mrs. Markos!

Geodesic Dome

After the MCAS Long Composition test, our class needed some fun project to work on. Miss O'Reilly challenged us to build a geodesic dome out of newspapers. First, we rolled newspapers into long rolls. Then we attached them together three at a time to form triangles. Our next job was to attach the triangles to form the walls of the dome. One group worked on building the top, but it was too small.

We're still working out the challenges of making the walls stand up and attaching the roof. Hopefully we'll finish it up and be able to go inside soon! It's an exciting group project.

Area

In math, we are learning about finding area. On Wednesday, we made models of square feet, and then put them together to build a square yard.




After building our square yard, we focused on finding the area of...our skin! We used a rule of thumb about area: that the area of your skin is about 100 times the area of your hand print. So we traced our hands onto one inch grid paper and found the area. After that, we multiplied by 100 to calculate the area of our skin in square inches. Once we knew that measurement, we figured out how many square feet our skin was, and then we found out how the area of our skin compared to a square yard. Most of the class had about one square yard of skin. Amazing!

Kitchen Layouts

In math, we used our kitchen layouts to learn about work triangles. Work triangles measure the distances between kitchen appliances. There are kitchen efficiency experts that have done studies to show what efficient kitchens look like and efficient distances between appliances.

Finding the perimeter of our kitchen work triangles helped us to know if our kitchens are efficient or not!

Precipitation

Each science group did an experiment to see how many drops it would take in order for our "clouds" to show precipitation. They made scientific predictions and revised those predictions while doing the experiment two or three times. Do you believe we made it rain inside our classroom?

March 1

There was one student who completed the optional project during vacation. Anna shared her results from the optional vacation project with us today. She created tally sheets for her family to complete during one Saturday to collect data. Each time a family member used water, they recorded it on the tally sheets. Anna then compiled the data with her dad, and they figured out how much water was used for each activity, like hand-washing or doing a load of laundry. After they figured out the total gallons used for each activity, they compiled the water-use totals for the whole day. Anna's family of six used about 217 gallons of water on Saturday! Thank you, Anna, for sharing your project with us! You set a great example for everyone.

We had inside recess today because of the ice outside. These clever boys decided to build the most awesome domino creation. There were bridges and turns and towers! We all stopped to watch the dominoes cascade throughout the course. I loved overhearing the problem-solving that went on, especially when someone *gasp* bumped the table. Great teamwork, guys!

In math today, we worked on finding the whole (or the ONE) when given a fraction. For example, if 3 counters equals one third of the whole, we figured out that the whole must be nine counters. We also used pattern blocks. I think that the most entertaining part of the lesson was when the teacher got overhead marker on her face again.

We're working on writing personal narratives and have done some fun brainstorming activities to help us find story ideas. Right now, we're writing about a special "first" in our lives. Some of the essays are about the first time going to the dentist, the first time riding a roller coaster, the first time sleeping over at Grandma's and the first time riding in a helicopter. All of this good planning and writing we're doing will really help us come MCAS day!

In reading, we reviewed what a book's theme is...and came up with a list about theme. The class decided that a book's theme is what the author is trying to say through the story, a lifelong lesson that can be learned, and an idea that can apply to more than just the book. Ask your child about the theme in the book Horace and Morris but Mostly Dolores.

We're exploring the reasons why people should conserve water in science. One of the basic ideas of the water cycle is that there is no NEW water on Earth, since it is all rotating through the water cycle. So why should we worry about conservation? We'll let you know!

~ Miss O'Reilly