Fun Is In Session

We were excited to kick off our first field trip of the year at The Apple Store in Scottsdale to learn about iMovie!

Each student worked with a partner to first create video footage and take photos and then edit their movie.

After the movies were edited, the Apple Store Geniuses helped students upload their creation to a bracelet zip drive.

Everyone had a wonderful time and walked away with a movie strapped to their wrist! I uploaded all the movies to my YouTube Channel and created a playlist which can be viewed here. 

We were a little sad to ride the bus back to school because we had so much fun at The Apple Store, but we are excited for our next field trip in a few weeks.

Watch the video below for an inside glimpse of the field trip in action!

 

Harvest Festival

Last week the class had a great time at the school Harvest Festival. Special thanks to all the parents who helped out and/or donated. During the festival students created caramel apples, wrote an acrostic poem, participated in a pumpkin relay race, listened to some stories, created a turkey craft and just generally had a ton of fun! 

Watch this video to see what the Harvest Festival was like.

Spider Egg Sacs

As part of our spider unit, we created models of spider egg sacs. 

Female spiders lay up to 3,000 eggs in each egg sac! We also learned that female spiders protect these precious silken sacs by attaching them to their webs or hiding them in their nests. The class enjoyed learning about the life cycle of a spider, and loved this messy, hands on project.

Spiders

In Science class we have been learning about spiders!

Each student created a paper spider.

On the back of their spider, students wrote some facts they had learned about spiders.

Weighing Pumpkins

Yesterday each student weighed the pumpkin they are working with this week. 

We realized we couldn't just put the pumpkin on the bathroom scale I brought in from home. (We tried! It didn't work.) So we brainstormed as a class to figure out how we could determine the weight of each pumpkin.

Using problem solving strategies, we figured out if we weighed ourselves, and then weighed ourselves holding the pumpkin, we could subtract our weight from our weight holding a pumpkin and get the weight of the pumpkin. 

Pumpkin Math

We have been using pumpkins to learn some valuable math skills!

First we learned what the word circumference meant and brainstormed different ways to measure the circumference of a pumpkin. Several students thought using a ruler would work so we tried that. It did not work. One student suggested using a cloth measuring tape, which was a wonderful idea except that we did not have any measuring tapes. 

We finally realized we could use a piece of string and wrap it around the thickest part of the pumpkin. Then we used our rulers to measure the string. We also estimated, counted and measured the vertical lines on our pumpkins. We compared the number of lines of larger pumpkins and smaller pumpkins. This week we will continue pumpkin math by weighing our pumpkins and figuring out their radius. 

Benjamin Franklin Timeline

In Social Studies we have been learning about Benjamin Franklin. After completing a cyber-hunt, each student created a timeline of his life.

We took what we considered to be the most important events in his life and put them in order. Then we added them to our timeline and illustrated each historic event.

This rubric is how the timelines were graded.