States of Matter

I am blessed to work at a school that has great traditions.  One of which is 50's day.  Typically, we celebrate this the last day with students before Spring Break.  This year, we celebrated the Friday after due to a scheduling conflict.  Our fifth graders perform dances in the morning assembly and in the afternoon we have a live band, hula hoop and bubble gum blowing contests, and each grade dances.  It is a ton of fun!

This week, our learnt focused on this school wide event as well as finishing up loose ends.  During our writing time, we wrote directions for how to make a root beer float.

It is fun to process with the class and get them to think through the fact that we actually have to buy and gather the ingredients.  It was also neat to see their background knowledge of all our cooking experiences come to life when I asked them what they thought the ingredients would be.  They instantly named sugar.  We had great discussions throughout the week leading up to us making the root beer floats for snack on Friday.

 

My science unit for second and third quarter is solids and liquids.  We wrapped up the unit on Friday with our special snack.  We talked about the ingredients and the state of matter they represented.  

Earlier in the week, we listened to non-fiction texts about matter and acted out the three states of matter with our bodies before making a foldable with Cheerios.

 

When we acted out the states of matter, we were close together for a solid, some space for liquids, and even more room for gases.

 

We also finished up working on consonant diagraph sh and th.  I have many children who substitute the /f/ sound for th.  As we wrote words, I had children identify where the sound could be found in the word.  Depending on our time, either I wrote the word or they helped.

 

We will work more with the consonant diagraph th this weeks as it holds more opportunities for learning for this group of children.

My school also celebrates its 50th anniversary in May. Each grade level is working on a project for a time capsule to be buried and dug up in twenty five years at the 75th anniversary.  Our class worked on a class book of letters.  When I introduced this project, I talked about how it was a birthday present for a Monroe.  My class has lots of questions about how long it would be before we opened it. When I told them, they would be my age on Monroe's 75th anniversary, I shocked them!  We also talked about how kindergarten had changed throughout the years.  We have been reading Ramona the Pest during our quiet time and I referenced the story and how Ramona only goes to kindergarten for half day.  I asked them to think about things that make our school (and class) special.  Some of them understood that and it shows in their letters.  I loved the final outcome.

 

 

Sweet Spot

February is National Dental Health month so on Monday we talked about this and put eggs in four different liquids to observe any changes.  My class was making lots of predictions!  We also practiced self control because we were only observing!

I had one little boy proceed to tell me he could not just observe because one of the liquids smelled like dirty socks.  He was referencing the vinegar.  The coke turned the egg brown which they predicted.  However, the salt clung to the egg in the salt water and the vinegar ate the shell of the egg off.  They made connections to all of the above as they referenced it being like a cavity.  I asked them how they knew this and they said well when you do not take care of your teeth then you get cavities.  I wish I would have read Dr. Seuss' Tooth Book and made a list of words with the consonant diagraph th.  I have all that planned but my aha moment occurred after the fact.

 

In math, we are still reviewing 3D shapes so we did a lesson on 3D shapes that were edible!  Many things were left over from our 100th day snack but I did buy a few things.  After the lesson, I let them eat one of each 3D shape and gave them a ziploc bag to take the others home along with their shape mat as their weekend homework.

 

We are working on consonant diagraphs and using them in our writing.  Last week, I sent home a note asking for environmental print with those diagraphs.  We brainstormed words that begin or end with ch.  It was fun to see their little minds hard at work.

The concept of half was a math lesson that fell close to my consonant diagraph lesson. I bought some premade cookies to work with half but planned to cook with them too.  We listened to The Doorbell Rang and used the story to talk about the different groups the cookies were divided into.  After listening to the story, we used the recipe to make cookies.  Each child got a turn doing one of the directions whether it was measuring, pouring, mixing, or creaming.  It is really hard to keep children entertained while they take turns so we practiced skip counting in a variety of ways while they had turns.  

 

I have a griddle and hot plate in my room to use to cook. For years, I would haul a toaster oven from home to use on days like this but it would take time because they could not all cook at once.  The cafeteria ladies are my friends and usually with notice they help.  It also helps that I pay then with the end products.  One of the ladies told me when I was making arrangements, you know we are having those for lunch.  Well that is not nearly the same experience.  I have children who do not eat the school lunch and would not get one.  I want the to have the experience because some of my children had never made them from scratch.  It is about giving them vocabulary and opportunities they might not otherwise have.  The cookies cooked while they were at P.E. and Music.

We also read Give Me Half by Stuart J. Murphy.  We used the store bought cookies and demonstrated the concept of half.  They had to tell me where to cut and why.  We then delivered half a cookie to various people in the building.  When they gave their half away, they had to share why we were giving only a half.

 

When we made the cookies from scratch, we also talked about the measurement tools we used.  For my higher learners, we talked through why it is called 1/4 cup.  I showed them that measuring cup and the cup.  Some of them caught on and said it takes four of the smaller one to be equal to the larger one.

 

Snack is set up as a rotation during my free choice centers at this point in the year.  Their conversations while they ate their cookie were priceless.  They talked about which part of the recipe they helped with, the ingredients that were used, and how tasty the cookies were.  We had also talked about listening and the importance of following directions as we added each ingredient.  I heard the talking about how it was a good thing we added this ingredient or that ingredient in their conversations.  The cookies were sweet but the learning was sweeter.