It was so great to be back.... and it wasn't raining! Yay!
We have a new addition on the farm, and the kids were thrilled to meet her! This little lady needed a bottle this morning, so I took the opportunity to talk to the class about a calf's need for milk or milk replacer. The class heard about our previous bottle calf, who was on a diet of fresh milk, and we compared the approach to this one who is on milk replacer. On fresh milk, calves can stay on the bottle for much longer. Milk replacer should be used after the calf is given its colostrum for the first few days, and then you move the calf onto calf starter feed sooner than on actual milk. The kids were amazed at how quickly she sucked down that bottle!
Due to some chicken coop construction, our animal care morning was a bit different. We split up into groups and tackled feeding jobs, but avoided the chicken area. I'm looking forward to a new chicken system just in time for spring hatching! We quickly took care of all of the many animals on the farm and then hurried in to begin our lessons. I'm hoping we get more winter days like this one! It wasn't too bad out there!
In art class, the students worked on a sketch. We talked about filling the entire space on the page, and the group listened closely as we worked our way through the pencil drawing. Once the outlines were complete, the class traced the lines with a sharpie or black marker. Next, they used oil pastels to fill in the different areas. I explained to the kids that they could create a picture with realistic colors or choose to get very creative with it! We will finish these up next week, but I can already tell they are going to be amazing!
The class listened to the story of Gregory, the picky eater. They thought the idea of a goat who had poor eating habits was pretty funny! We talked about junk food, healthy foods, and they will be given the opportunity to write about eating habits in their weekly writing assignment.
The class was eager to read their journal entries from the previous week. They shared their favorite parts of the books that we had read so far this year. I can't believe half the year is already behind us! They were given their new book, "Mystery at the Roman Colosseum". We'll be stepping through this book and learning about Italy along the way.
We reviewed the western European countries and used a coloring map and key to go over the ones from the at-home assignment. Because there are so many countries in Europe, we will be learning about them over the next four weeks. We will be working on a paper bag project in class next week. I assigned three countries to each student. At home, they will be researching and writing down interesting facts and information about their countries on 3x5 notecards. In class, the kids will get into groups based on their countries. They will be working on creating a paper bag that represents each country... and the notecards will go inside! This will be a fun way to rotate through the bags and learn about the places that we have studied so far.
We are finishing up our lesson on protists, and the kids did a wonderful job understanding the different methods of mobility! We integrated some art into our science lesson by creating different protists to float and swim in a big pond wall project! There were protists with pseudopods, flagellum, cilia, and others just free floated. It looks great! At home, the group will begin learning about fungi... and I have an exciting lesson planned for next week!
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