Friday, March 29, 2013

Finding An Appetite for Fractions

It's amazing what you can fit into 4 days and a 2hr delay! :)

This week, our focus in math was on fractions, and we had quite the "appetite" for it!
 
 

We used pizzas to discuss parts of a whole.  There's a great video for that (and for parts of a set) on our math wiki site (link on our webpage) that we watched.  Students then created an order for pizza and "made it", complete with box! 
After reading a great book called The Lion's Share, we also made pies for different kinds of animals. Students then cut their pies into the number of pieces so that each animal could get one slice and created a fraction.

 
Today, we discussed parts of a set and used doughnuts (a whole dozen!) as an example, creating an order and making the doughnuts.
 
Quite the "Fraction Foodcourt"!

We also spent time in our garden today, planting and dreaming of the time when we'll be able to taste our harvest!
 
 
In addition, we did an egg hunt, where students had to follow directions to find their eggs (face north, take 3 steps, turn south, etc.).  We also tried to help a bunny find his friend following similar directions, but it seemed to be a bit harder on paper than real life!
  

I want to wish everyone a happy, fun, and safe Spring Break and Easter!  See you in a week! :)

Friday, March 22, 2013

A Lot of Green!

With St. Patrick's Day and our plants unit, we've seen a lot of green in our classroom lately!

Last week, students wrote to the leprechaun using correct friendly letter format in order to avoid our room being "trashed" by the leprechaun.  It worked!  He left students a treasure hunt where they had to solve math problems in order to get to the "pot of gold" (clover stickers and Rolos!). 

We've also been finishing up our plant unit by decorating our window with lima bean seeds.  We're hoping to see them sprout soon and watch how the roots develop.  I just hope the cold weather lately hasn't put our seeds back to sleep!  We've also been getting our school garden ready to plant!  Check out what we learned about soil and earthworms!






Here are a few other things we've been up to:





Please make sure to send in books for our book exchange (thank you to the parents who already have!).  Stay warm and I hope we're able to avoid our early spring/late winter storm! :(

Sunday, March 3, 2013

A Few Famous Americans....Including Dr. Seuss!

What a great week!  We started the week finishing our animal unit and students created a "graffiti wall" using a "mind dump."  What exactly does that mean?  It means they took all the information from their mind about animals, life cycles, habitats, and adaptations and drew pictures and wrote information on bulletin board paper!  It was a fun way to review and brought out the students' creative side!

In the past couple of weeks, we've also finished contractions and sent a shout out to the end of winter with a snowball fight and Valentine's Day.



This week, we also shared our Famous American projects.  We had 9 Jackie Robinsons (!), 4 Helen Kellers, a Billie Holiday (and we listened to her music as well!), Albert Einstein, Morgan Garrett (inventor of the traffic signal), Thomas Edison, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Harriet Tubman.  I loved the variety of people we learned about!

We also celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday with activities all week, including wockets in our pockets, making our own green eggs and ham poetry, what we would say to Horton if we were a Who, and creating a hat using a glyph about what we like to read!






Next week, we will be starting our plant unit (life cycle, parts, uses, and erosion) as well as our friendly letter unit.  It's also back to the homework packets!  Please make sure to keep practicing those math facts with your child, as well as telling time and counting money!  These are basic skills students need to master before third grade! ;)