week of 10-10-11

A few pics that show our learning last week. Enjoy! :)

Echo.....location......Echo........location! During Morning Meeting we went outside and played a game. Some of the students were bats while the other students were insects. The bats had to close their eyes and say Echo while the bugs responded with Location (Kinda like - Marco-Polo ....echolocation is the term for how bats use echos and sound to catch their food).

Snazzy Snack  - This week the students had to follow the directions for the Cheesy Spiderweb to create their yummy snack. Thanks so much to our donators! :)

 

Eyeball Editing.... We learned about and practiced the skill of editing in writing this week. We used eyeball rings to help us "see" all of our mistakes and correct them.

Bat Craft - "Ms. Frizzle" sent us a special bat craft to create to go along with our bat unit.

 

What a wonderful week of learning we had!!! :) 

Bats, Bats, and More Bats

It's a review week in reading this week. We are reviewing the skills and concepts we've learned the past five weeks. We're doing this with BATS!!! (After all, bat is a multiple meaning word and that is one of our vocab strategies!) We've learned so much about bats already and we're only half way through the week. 

When we discussed what we wondered about bats, many of us wondered how big bats really were. There are over 1,000 different species of bats, but we found out that the Bumble Bee Bat (the smallest bat) has a wing span of only 5 inches. It is so small that it can fit into a walnut shell!!! The largest bat is the Flying Fox. Its wing span is nearly 6 feet! We measured these lengths so we could see how big/small they really were. 

Can you believe that bats can eat about 600 mosquitos in one hour??!?! So how many is that? What does that look like? We decided to create a little visual. The students worked as a team to glue mosquitos (100 of them) onto a play. Each of the six group had a display of 100 mosquitos when they were done. We put them all together and realized just how many 600 really!!!

The students are taking all of the information they are learning this week to write a creative writing Diary of a Bat! Wait until you hear their stories! They are turning out wonderful! :) That's all for tonight....... "Fangs" for stopping by! :)

Take a Peek at our Learning

We have been busy bees learning lately!! Here is just a little bit of what's been going on!! :)

We were thrilled on Monday when Mrs. Roy called down and told us that this strange looking box came in the mail! What could be inside????

When we opened the box, we found out that it was from Ms. Frizzle (from  The Magic School Bus). The box was filled with all kinds of stuff about bats! We decided to do a little bat research and learn more about these cool critters!

 

We've also been working hard on creating our landforms. The students learned all about the various types of landforms. To assess their understanding and help them learn in a concrete way, the students used salt dough to create different landforms. The landforms were then painted and a map key was created. (Finished pics coming soon!)

Landforms are created. Now it's time to start painting!

This week is review week in reading. The students have been reviewing the concepts, skills, and vocab that we've been learning the past five weeks. To review our vocab words, we played Vocab on the Move. The students went around the classroom asking their classmates for clues (synonyms, antonyms, etc.) for the word that was on their head! 

We're reviewing problem and solution this week as part of our review week. We read The Vanishing Pumpkin. Next, we used vanishing ink (lemon juice mixture) to write the problem and the solution of the story! It was so cool to see the ink disappear and then reappear using heat!

 

Last we we learned about the long I sound in spelling. We sorted "fries" into the correct containers as we practiced the pattern.

As we practiced telling time to the nearest minute, we played I Spy. We walked around the room to try to spy different times with our little eyes.

To learn about number patterns and input output tables, the students had a chance to use our Function Machine! 

Our first MYSTERY READER was so much fun!!! :)