Sorry for the lack of posts lately! It has been crazy. Here are some photos and videos from the past few weeks.
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Last week the kids finished up their ocean floor design briefs. Their task was to make a pop-up card that had all of the features of the ocean floor we've been discussing in class (see my poster below with each part). Here are some pictures of their cards!
We learned all about dairy farms and the importance of drinking milk at an assembly last week. Here is a picture of the kids on that blustery day!
I have the sweetest kids in my class! I was in a long meeting and came back to a surprise party for my birthday complete with a selfie station and props! They made getting older a bit easier for me :) Thank you, my sweetie pies! ;) Lately we've been learning about polygons! Here are a few videos from class to review the types of quadrilaterals! And a video of our friend singing a great song his mom made up :) We started our nonfiction book clubs last week. The books are due Friday, and I love how so many of the kids are getting into their books :)
On Thursday the kids teamed up and worked together to study for their science test. Here is a short video of the kids having fun while studying :) Last week to close out our life science unit, we studied vascular and nonvascular plants! We took some celery (a vascular plant) and moss (a nonvascular plant) and observed how the two types took in the water from their surroundings. When you hear the word vascular, you might think about the human body's vascular system, also known as the circulatory system. It is a system of special tubes that carry our blood and other things throughout our bodies. Similarly, vascular plants have a special system of tubes to help them transport things throughout their bodies! We discovered that the celery, like the human body, has a set of tubes. These tubes help it to carry the water straight up from the roots to the leaves. In class, the dye in the water in which we placed the celery absorbed a lot of the color and enabled us to see the xylem (pronounced zy-lem) really well (see pictures below). A simplified explanation on the way vascular plants work is by sucking up water through their roots which then zooms up with nutrients the xylem to the leaves. The leaves then help the plant go through photosynthesis by using the water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide to make a special sugar/food called glucose. The phloem then takes the food and "flows" the food throughout the plant. These special tubes, the xylem and phloem, are part of what enable vascular plants to grow larger than nonvascular plants. Vascular plants have stems, roots, leaves, and can have flowers and grow tall. In class, we used our bodies to mimic the action of the water "zooming up through the xylem" and "flowing food throughout the plant with the phloem" tubes (pronounced flow-em), which is a good way to help us remember the tubes and their functions. Nonvascular plants don't have special tubes to carry water up high so they have a tendency to be lower to the ground or source of food. They absorb water and nutrients from their surroundings and pass it from cell to cell! They don't have leaves and can't get super big like vascular plants. Some examples are hornwort, liverwort, moss, and lichen. Here are some pictures of our activity!
We've been working in writing on our performance assessment and had a class debate to help us with counterarguments and rebuttals. Here is a video of the kids "debating" :) I think I have some future lawyers in my class... |