Pancakes, Play Dough, and Problem Solving

We have been busy.  Last Friday, we worked so hard we earned our class reward.  After making pancakes to watch a liquid change to a solid with heat, we used our problem solving skills to think deeper.  To reward the hard work, we spent the last hour playing with play dough. I loved Raymond's recreation of the Mayflower. 

Weeks like the last 1, reminds me of the many blessings I have in my class. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Making an educated guess

Today we learned about making a hypothesis. We all tried to determine the best way to make the solid ice cube change into a liquid.  After we formed our hypothesis, we tested it out. 

Caden used a light

Eliana and Holly thought throwing it on the wall

Madison and Nikolas thought putting it in their mouth. 

Raymond and Orion thought about using their hands. 

After some cold hands and wet papers, our class looked at what they learned and realized that hear was the common factor.   The more heat, the faster the melting.   Students realized that are body (hands and mouth) produce heat!

Examining liquids!

We took time investigate liquid. Students sorted the liquids by their properties!  Take time to ask students what a liquid is?  

Putting Our Best Foot Forward

Red ribbon week was a success!  Thanks to sweet room moms who helped put our poster together. It's been a busy week. 

I loved visiting with everyone at conferences. As always, please let me know if you have concerns. 

It was a beautiful day

FIELD TRIP!

We could not ask for a better day. Thank you to our PTA for giving us the gift to learn in the field!  We spent the morning running and rolling (great for our motion unit) and picnicking in the park. The afternoon was spent exploring the Children's Museum. My highlight was going up the power tower. Be sure to ask what your student loved. Look back tomorrow and I will post some tweets from them!  

Doing it all...

Last week we used ALL our skills to write and solve our own math word problems. Students created a setting (to work as the story mat), wrote a problem, and then edited it for capitalization and punctuation. We passed the problems to another group to solve the student created problems. It was truly mixing reading, writing and math!

Making Math Matter

Part of learning requires students to own what they are doing. As we learn new math vocabulary, we draw pictures to illustrate the meaning. The last 2 weeks we have been working on addition and subtraction problems. As an adult, we just know what the + and - sign mean. Today we drew pictures to illustrate addition and subtraction. Students came up with lots of different illustrations!  I love to see deeper thinking.