What Happened to April???!!!

Yep...it's happening again. The days are racing by, and even though one may write the date on the board every day....one may not actually make the connection.  In fact, it is not only May, but we only have 23 days of school left!

But back to April. We took on a very challenging art project for Earth Day. We created a mosaic of the Earth using torn bits from magazines.  Our model shows North and South America as seen from space. I think they did a magnificent job. It was time consuming and those who finished had a moment of great pride...and rightly so!

We were also exploring new ideas in geometry at the time. Children created many models to help their understanding. We learned the differences between 2-D and 3-D shapes, and the names, face, edge, and vertex.

In Science, we discussed the properties of gasses. We know that gas molecules are like 2nd graders in the classroom at recess...THEY WANT TO GET OUT!
We did the Dancing Raisins experiment to see
gas molecules in action. We used a glass of club soda and dropped in some raisins. We could see the gas molecules collect on the raisins and float them to the top of the glass. Then the raisins would drop back  to the bottom of the glass because their little floaties had escaped into the air!

 We also completed our shadow tracking activity that we started in December, just before winter break.
The children were quite surprised to discover that their shadows, which measured 13 to 17 of our partners' feet long in December, were now 4-6 'feet long!' Our sun is definitely sitting higher in the sky!

Speaking of sunny days....could we have had a more gorgeous day on Cheetah Walk/Earth Day? The children and adults all enjoyed 45 minutes of gorgeous fresh air while raising awareness and funds to help protect the wild cheetah in Africa.

Fractions closed out our month. Our wooden shapes came in handy again as 'equal shares' . We used them to create new shapes, then wrote the fraction for one of the shapes. This was a very challenging activity for spacial reasoning as well.

Fractions were also very tasty  as we explored the idea of 'whole' using clementine oranges. The children counted up the total segments in their clementine. They knew this would be the "D-down-denominator." They wrote the completed fraction for a whole (8/8 for example) then shared some of their clementine. They wrote the fraction of what they shared. Then ...well....we ate them!

I will have one final blog posting for the year. It will probably be after the last day of school, depending on my post school responsibilities, getting the room buttoned up for the summer.

It was great to see many of you at the Science and Art Walk tonight!
Be advised you have a music concert evening on Wednesday the 24th, and a 4 day weekend coming up on the 26-29th (Memorial Day Weekend + previous Friday, which was a potential snow make up day.)
Have a wonderful weekend!