May 18, 2013

Hi Everyone,

You probably wondered what happened to us last weekend.  Well, Kim wrote our blog on our practice site.  We are so sorry and didn't mean to have a blank week.  It was a busy weekend full of celebrations because Anne's daughter graduated from college, but we are back on track now.

Let's get back to our Natural Resource Unit, which lead us into our Astronomy Unit.  Kim's class read the book A New Coat For Anna by Harriet Ziefert.  It is a story of a little girl who needs a new coat, but cannot buy one due to the war.  She and her mother trade their valuables for resources to make a coat. Through the story, the children learned how sheep's wool and berries were needed to make this beautiful coat. Before reading, the students were given ten sentences from the story. They needed to predict the order these sentences would appear. As we read, the students had fun recognizing these sentences. Then after reading, the students had no problem going back and sequencing them in the proper order.

The following day the students were given a challenge activity. They had to go back and partner read A New Coat For Anna, and then tried to decide the six most important events of the story. We came back as a class and listed these six events. From this list, the students had to write their own summary of the story and make a summary wheel. They really rose to the occasion! We can't believe how independent they are becoming.

Due to time, we couldn't do our next activity. However, a great book to compare to A New Coat For Anna is Charlie Needs a Cloak by Tomie De Paola. Another fun activity that we have planned to go along with this book is to dye cotton balls using plants, such as spinach, blackberries, red cabbage, beets, and red onions. You can find this activity in the AIMS Fall Into Math and Science book. It is called, "Leaf the Dying to Us."

Anne's class read Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema. This is an African tale about how a herdsman named Ki-pat solves the problem of the drought by shooting an arrow into the big black cloud over Kapiti Plain. We first focused on the vocabulary word drought, which they could all define because of our reading of Anansi's Feast.  As we read, we discussed the effects the drought had on the natural resources in the area, including the bodies of water, the plants, and animals.

This book is great to teach cause and effect, as well as summarizing the plot of the story. After the first day's reading, we completed a cause and effect graphic organizer. On the second day, Anne's students also had a challenging activity. They, too had to partner read the story and complete the Crayon Conversation organizer by Christine Boardman Moen. With this organizer, they had to identify the main character, three important plot events that affected the character, and how the story ended. After completing this organizer, they published and illustrated their work.

To reinforce the concept of conserving our natural resources, and to continue our focus on persuasive writing, we watched the Dr. Seuss movie, The Lorax. Afterwards, we wrote persuasive paragraphs answering the question: Is it important to take care of our natural resources? We found a cute activity from Amy Lemons to go along with this.  Ours did not turn out as adorable as Amy's, but we'll try again next year!

Our natural resource, the sun, allowed us to flow into our next science unit on astronomy. Our first key concept in this unit was the sun is a source of heat and light. We made heat catchers out of tin foil to capture the sun's heat rays. The students had a great time feeling their fingers getting warmer and warmer. Some even extended our lesson on hyperbole by claiming their fingers were burning! Ha ha!

Then, it was important to talk about the ultra violet rays that come from the sun, and how we need to protect ourselves from them. We completed an Energy Beads Experiment using beads found at Steve Spangler's Science Store.  We put SPF 4 sunscreen on some beads and SPF 50 on others, and watched the effects the sunscreens had on the beads.

We can't believe we only have ten days left of school! This year has really flown by! This summer, our blogs will be about the lessons we are creating for our teacher store. We will be putting up some freebies on our blog!

Again, Kim apologizes for the mix-up last week. Have a great week!

Kim and Anne