Today's class began with a science experiment! The class used their knowledge about the scientific method to work through experiments involving water displacement and cohesion. The students are getting more comfortable with forming their prediction, hypotheses, and coming up with their conclusions, which is just fantastic! They loved adding drops of water to the tops of pennies to see how cohesion keeps the liquid from falling off the edge! For water displacement, the class was shocked to see how the number of pennies needed to raise the water in the container changed drastically when only a little added to the experiment. We have a group of little scientists!
In grammar, the class reviewed common and proper nouns. Then, we discussed how pronouns are used to improve sentences. If we kept using the same nouns over and over again, it would sound awful! The class has been working at home (hopefully!) to memorize the first two sections of the pronoun list. This week, they will add the final pronoun card to their grammar cards! They will be memorizing the entire list and can get a prize as soon as they can show me in class! To help them remember the words, the group became pronoun investigators. They each chose a book from the bookcase and found as many pronouns as they could. They wrote the pronouns on their dry erase boards, and we did a little math to find out how many pronouns the entire class found altogether.
The group did an amazing job with their poem, The Caterpillar. I will be finished editing their videos very soon! Because we are learning about Native Americans, our next poem is written by a Native American poet. They will be working on this one at home, and we will do something fun with it once we have it committed to memory.
In art, the class completed their lesson on realism. Last week, Ms. Gina helped the class work on a still life sketch. It was interesting to see how tricky it was for children to rein in their wild imaginations and focus on the details in front of them. It was also very tricky to help them to only draw from their own perspective at the table. Today, they took their sketches and added paint! They tried to mix the paint to create different shades for the leaves, pumpkins, and gourds.
For our math enrichment today, the class quickly reviewed the ways to make 10. As I mentioned before, I believe it is very important to help our children thoroughly master arithmetic problems at this age, not just understand how they work. We have been trying to memorize the ways to make 10 (5 and 5, 7 and 3, 8 and 2...) so that they can recall them without thinking. Today, we played a card game! The kids played a game similar to "war", but where each student drew two cards. They had to add up their two cards and see which person had the highest sum. The player with the highest sum took the opponent's cards and added it to their pile. In the end, those with the most cards won! This was awesome to watch, as the kids helped each other add their numbers and talked, on their own, about how to quickly add them. I helped them understand some mental math strategies to help them play the game more smoothly next time. For example, when adding 8 and 6, I helped them think of how many 8 would need to take from the 6 to make the 8 a 10. The class quickly told me that 2 would help the 8 become a 10. They could picture that helping the 8 become a 10 would leave 10 + 4 instead of 8 + 6, which is far easier to do in your head. This strategy is just a tool for them to add to their Mental Math Toolbox! Because they were learning the strategies to help them play the game instead of learning them just to learn, they were eager to listen and apply it!
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| The class followed along on Ipad books during our story time today. We will keep reading our Thanksgiving story each week! |
The duck eggs hatched, so we spent some time locing on some sweet baby ducks!
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