Twirly Bird Company

I needed to assess today in fifth grade so I set up a Twirly Bird Company. Our variable unit is 2/3 of the way finished so this was a great way to assess direction reading and teach a bit of a real life skill. I set it up that I hired each to work in my factory. They were set in  their own cubicle (folders up) with directions for the twirly bird. They were pretty simple, so I thought. Cut on the black lines, fold on the dotted line. Place a paper clip on the end of the twirly bird. Out of my first production line of finished twirly birds, I had 10 made correctly. Those were my employees that got promoted. I put the others on probation, at risk of being fired. 8 more were able to be successful, but I still had 6 students unable to make a twirly bird.

We wrapped up by me modeling the directions and discussing how important it is to really pay attention to the directions and details, and how important it is to have good training. Teachers everyday, try to model and show in many ways how to help our students become successful. Sometimes it takes our kiddos a little longer or another way to show them how to complete a task. Whether one day they are the boss, and need to make sure they have a
great training program, or someone who works in a factory, this lets them get an idea of real life.

Here are the twirly bird directions and sheets:)

http://www.lhsfoss.org/fossweb/worksheets/protected/5-6/VariablesAssessMstrsENG.pdf

Check The Weather and The Forecast

We are going on a "trip" today, but before we figure out where we are going we have to figure out what weather everyone likes. It is a great way to use adjectives in our science lesson. We made a book to help us know where to send everyone in case we all like different types of weather. After we filled out the sheet, we found out that we needed to send our class to 4 different locations: a sunny place, (Key West, FL) a warm place, (Myrtle Beach, SC), and a cold place, (Nome, AK). The other corner liked it rainy, so we looked up each vacation destination and determined that today it was 82 in FL, 72 in SC, and 36 in AK. My rainy friends could join their classmates in South Carolina and Alaska this next week because they seem to be getting rain. We looked at the forecast of each city and realized that we were using our meteorology skills. We used a real thermometer to test hot and cold weather and learned how to chart the temperature on a paper thermometer. Wouldn't it be nice to send some of the sun our way in Wisconsin, Saturday looks like a chance of SNOW! Yikes. This is one of those times I hope our meteorologist is wrong.


                                                      Weather or Not?

This is a great song that we used to follow up on our learning about thermometers and temperature.

Weather or Not

We are working on an  air and weather unit in 2nd grade  this quarter. This is a great song to go along with our meteorology tools that we are making. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBfaAN_tWW4

Here is the sheet we will be working on as we build our vocabulary.

weather words

Rock On!

Our third graders are learning to become geologists in science this week. We have used our "mock" rocks to test our measurement skills, and ability to understand what properties rocks, minerals, and crystals have. We learned that the type of crystal Mrs. Heinrich added to the recipe was kosher salt. Now onto the hardness test. We are trying to determine how geologists also test minerals for hardness. We used our finger nail, a penny, and a paper clip to see which one of our minerals was the hardest. We are still trying to work on perfecting our ability to determine which mineral is harder than the other. Our I/E group will be starting a new book from Science A-Z on rocks, minerals, and soil. This is one site I found some fun activities to do for our block.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/history/handsonhistory/dig_partners_english.pdf

I am also using these two sheets for my review on minerals and what geologists do.
Rock On Geologists

Bean There, Done That

We tried bean and kale soup during our Garden Club Wednesday meeting. Holy moly... all but one student tried soup that had 5 types of beans, squash, celery, and kale in it. Take a look at the graph we had to extend because they loved it! Awesome!!!!! We went out to pick the rest of our kale and the kiddos took it home to share. This garden stuff really does make kids try new things! I will include the recipe for you to try yourself. Be brave, friends, veggies are good for you!

 We used this book with the little ones. It shares the process of growing a bean from seed. We sent home baggies with a bean wrapped in a paper towel and a piece of masking tape to watch them grow.

We made a graph to show what we thought of bean and kale soup. I was surprised as to how many kiddos actually liked it and even tried it. Yea! Take a look at how excited the kids are about picking kale and bringing it home! A lot of the kale didn't even make it home, they ate it right away!

Five Senses In And Out Of The Garden

This week we are wrapping up our five senses unit with our kindergartners. I was trying to figure out a good way to get them outside for science. It still is pretty nice here in Wisconsin, although we did see our first frost in the courtyard and witnessed some frost burned leaves later on in the day, but that won't stop us from using the garden in any way we can. Here is what our little kiddos did in the garden this week.

Five Senses In An Out Of The Garden

We read this book to wrap up what we learned about our five senses. We also made a chart that helped up remember what our senses do. It is fun to see the kids really start to write and comprehend!

Paying Pickles Forward and More

Our garden has produced an amazing amount of vegetables. We have had an Open House, Open Garden picking which brought in over 200 people into our garden to reap the benefits of our planting. We also had a harvest gathering with over 145 people last week. We gathered vegetables and also ate together and had many presenters sharing garden cooking and more.

 What we want to teach our students is that it is great to get things, (picking veggies during club time, eating food that we make with harvested veggies...) but it is even better to give. We made pickles two weeks ago and now it is time to give to others. Our pickles are being given to our adult crossing guards and one jar is being given to our principal on Boss's Day on Wednesday. Our students in our Green Team Garden Club also picked a ton of cherry tomatoes as well. We made 22 bags of cherry tomatoes for our teachers. Here is the label that we used on the teacher bags. Our garden club enjoyed doing something nice for the teachers and others that help us grow.

Garden Thanks

 Our pickles we are paying forward. When we are in a pickle, we can always count on our crossing guards.

 We gathered a second harvest of dill. We are hanging it upside down so that we can use the dry dill to make dip this fall.

Some of our wonderful Green Team Garden Club with their new t-shirts!