5 Senses "Rap" Up

Our cute little kindergarten kiddos are on their final week of learning about their five senses. We sang our song about our five senses sung to bingo, we make a cute chart to go along with learning to write words as a class, and we practiced writing on our own. We finished with our 5 senses book by Aliki.

                                           

We finished with  a little rap...

I see with my eyes and hear with my ears,
I've been using my senses all of my years.
I use my tongue to taste good stuff
My hands can feel things that are soft and rough,
I use my nose to sniff those smells,
I use my five senses as you can tell.

Yo, 5 senses... hear, see, smell, taste and touch,
it's now your turn to use the whole bunch.
Yo, 5 senses.

Okay, friends...remember the song I was telling you about... It goes to the tune of Bingo.

I have five senses yes I do, I use them everyday.

Ears, Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Hands,

Ears, Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Hands

Ears, Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Hands

I use them every day!

Harvest Is Over and The Garden is Bare:(

So, we dug out all of the plants in our school garden this week. It makes me sad to see it so bare. Now, I have to get creative. How can we keep the garden spirit alive. Well, for one, I get to go buy a greenhouse! Yea! Grants are great things. Then we can try to grow in the winter. (At least we can try) I am thinking lettuce, beets, carrots. I came up with another activity though to do in the winter as we start having to buy our produce from warmer places.

                                                                  Veggie Mapping

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!