After milking the goats, feeding the animals, and giving the baby goats their bottles, the kids climbed back into the building for some Farm News. We talked about the new feeder pigs, the eggs that are due to hatch, and the goat kids that have already gone to new homes. We will be able to snuggle the others for another week or so before they are all off to new owners!
The kids and I have been talking a lot about the mechanics behind milking machines. Today, I gave each group of students 2 small jars, 2 small tubes, and a syringe that would be used as their "vacuum pump". I also covered one of the jars in Press and Seal wrap to create an airtight seal. The other jar was partly filled with colored liquid. The groups had to create a vacuum system that would move the liquid from one jar to the other but not allow liquid to be sucked up into their "pump". It took a little work, but each and every group succeeded! 
The class has learned about conifers, so it just seemed right to create a little art project using pine cones! The kids grabbed templates of different owl parts and used them to cut out shapes from felt. Sometimes, kids at this age are reluctant to layer mediums in arts/crafts. They were able to layer felt in ways that gave the wings, eyes, feathers, etc. more dimension. We'll finish these up next week.
The class then discussed Ernest Shackleton's life and many accomplishments. They are working on a two week long project to create a Shackleton storyboard. They have long strips of paper that will be wound around dowels to create a "movie"! Today, they covered and decorated the boxes that will house their projects. I can't wait for these to come together!
We had a class review of the parts of speech today, as well as a thorough discussion on pronouns. So many kids at this age confuse the term "pronoun" with "proper noun"! We talked about some common grammar mistakes and worked through some trickiness. The class will be moving on to prepositions next week.
I wanted to integrate map skills into our study of Asia. Although we had already discussed latitude & longitude, map keys, and the compass rose, I took this opportunity to explain how to read a map's scale. The kids used slips of paper to measure distances between different countries in India. They used these slips of paper against the scale on the maps to determine the distance. They will be working more with this at home to further review this new skill. At home, they will be reading through a little booklet that I made on China. We will discuss them when we return!
No comments:
Post a Comment