What’s the matter? Science demonstration

In our very short week back from winter vacation, students participated in a science demonstration to mix a solid with a liquid. We used 4 out of our 5 senses to record and observe what we noticed.

First we observed a white chalky tablet. We discovered it was Alka Seltzer.

Next, we observed a clear liquid. We discovered it was plain old tap water.

Third, we dropped the Alka Seltzer tablet into the water and voila, magic!

Students loved looking, listening, touching, and smelling the reaction.

How could you have changed this demonstration? What other solids would dissolve in a liquid?

Adventures in Fitness

The winter weather has kept our team inside on occasion but we have found a great way to stay active in the classroom. Check out a new site called Adventure to Fitness. It’s a free website that promotes a healthy lifestyle for kids while they are learning. You can even try this at home for those rainy, cold days.

http://www.adventuretofitness.com/

IMG 2434 from Sarah Lewis on Vimeo.

IMG 2432 from Sarah Lewis on Vimeo.

Star Gazers and Planet Serenades

To wrap up our solar system unit students created constellation tubes and planet posters. They worked in partners to create visuals to represent 8 planets + Pluto, our dwarf planet. We then put out posters to music with the solar system song. Each planet had a verse to sing about what they researched. We found out that poor Pluto did not have it’s own stanza in the song so some students created a final verse to honor Pluto. Look for those original lyrics in our comments about the song.

 

 

Click this picture to watch our video.

Storyline

Has anyone tried Storyline under our reading tab? This is such a neat site that has famous actors reading children’s books aloud. They also add music and make the story pages come alive. I’d like to share, Somebody Loves you Mr. Hatch with our class on Valentine’s Day. Click on the image below to see if you can find this title under the, All Stories Index and tell me what you think.

Happy reading!

Heritage Museum

We were lucky enough to have the Heritage Museum from Sandwich visit Mullen Hall last week. They shared a map that depicted different Native American culture areas. The students loved being able to show what they knew about our country and its neighbors.

We also got to put on special white gloves in order to handle the artifacts that were passed around. Tools, dishes, dolls, and more were shared with our class!

Our Star

This week our star went the distance by reading his star of the week book both in English and Russian! What a creative way to let us experience a different culture. Our star’s family also created a very special video about the love between a boy and his dog, Pushkin. We really enjoyed learning all about our star this week!

This week

Team 203 was very lucky to have an opportunity to visit the Cotuit Center for the Arts on Wednesday. The theme for this exhibit was, So Big and Team 203 was SO impressed!

We learned about perspective, scale, and size through each of the unique pieces. We even got to meet one of the artists who made a recreation of a Nantucket village.

Take a look at what happened when we tried our hand at creating a collaborative piece to emulate the So Big theme.

Many students were very excited and eager to visit Cotuit again. Here is the link so that you can keep an eye out for upcoming exhibits and shows that could be appropriate for you and your family. http://www.cotuitcenterforthearts.org/

He’s a star!

This star was full of energy and enthusiasm during his week in the spotlight! On read aloud day we had teachers and students stopping in our doorway just to hear who was reading with such fluency! He even got the other students singing along with his favorite childhood picture book, We’re going on a Bear Hunt. We also learned that this star has been an athlete since he was old enough to walk but that he also enjoys acting in plays. What a great combination! Check out all of his fans below!

A snowy season

While Falmouth schools were cancelled we did not get nearly as much  snow as we expected on our first full snow day of 2011. Quite a few miles north in Franklin where I live it was a much different story, we got 17 inches of snow!! Check out the picture from our back deck. It took us awhile to shovel out, thank goodness we had a snow day or I might have been taking a sled to work!