Saturday, June 8, 2013

Well, Tuesday was our final day of school.  As we mentioned in our previous blog, we knew the last day would be bittersweet.  This year, both of our classes were amazing.  The students were happy, eager to learn, and seemed to love most of the activities we did.  It's always appreciated when seven and eight year olds enjoy the lessons we worked so hard to plan.  Our students pushed themselves to their limits and achieved goals we could not have dreamed for them.  Hopefully they are as proud of themselves as we are of them.  We truly believe our kids have become mature, serious students who are ready for new challenges.  We will miss them tremendously, but we know we will see their happy faces in the hallways waving to us as they scurry to their new classrooms in the fall.

Even though we only had a day and a half of school last week, we still planned fun, yet academic, activities.  Let us share a few that our students really loved.

On Monday we did a shared reading Wanda's Roses by Pat Brisson.  This story went along with our Natural Resources theme.  It's about a third-grade girl who finds what she thinks is a rose bush in a trash-ridden area.  She thinks the rose bush isn't blooming because it doesn't have enough sunlight, air, and water.  So she cleans up the trash thinking this will help.  When the rose bush still does not produce blooms, Wanda comes up with an idea to solve the problem.  In the process she receives many surprises.  Things turn out better than she could have ever hoped.

After reading and discussing the story, we found the turning point in the story to help us decide on the theme.  The kids came up with amazing ideas even on the last full day of school!!!!  Such ideas included:

When you have a problem get creative and solve it.

Staying calm and positive helps you solve problems.

Sometimes things work out better than you could have planned.

When you believe in your ideas you can make them come true.

This really is a book worth reading.

We then did a science experiment to show how two different types of trash, styrofoam and packing peanuts can affect our earth.  The question was, What will happen when a piece of styrofoam and a packing peanut are dropped into water?  What we discovered was the styrofoam stayed in the water and did nothing, but the packing peanut dissolved.  This is because the packing peanuts were made out of cornstarch.  We had a lengthy discussion of which product would be better to throw away in the trash and be better for our earth and the animals.  We discussed the idea of trying not to buy styrofoam products because they fill up our landfills and never go away.  We also discussed how some companies are becoming more responsible about the products they use making sure they are good for our environment.

Here is the video that inspired this science experiment. 

Then we used Magic Nuddle Building Blocks from Steve Spangle to create beautiful sculptures.  These nuddles are made out of cornstarch just like the packing peanuts we used in our experiment.  However, if you just add a little bit of water to the nuddles it acts like glue, and rather than melting them, it makes them stick together.  

Butterflies and a Flower

A Dinosaur

A Flower By A Lake

A Sword

A Bird On A Fence

Our final fun activity for the year was inspired by our favorite second-grade teacher, Amy Lemons.  We encourage you to check out her blog.  It is loaded with effective reading, writing, and math lessons.  

This lesson was called Measuring Olympics.  We did this activity during the final hour of the last day of school, and the kids were engaged the entire time.  The objective was to use meter sticks to measure the distances pom pons traveled.  We gave the kids a list of events such as flicking, dropping, blowing, tossing, spinning, and kicking to do with their pom pons.  We modeled each event and how to use the inch side of the meter sticks to measure the distances.  Below are pictures of the activity.

Thank you Amy Lemons for helping to make our final day of school fun and exciting for our students.

We hope you all had a wonderfully fulfilling final day of school.  Have a restful and relaxing summer.  Be sure to stop by our blog and checkout lessons we are creating for next year.  

Kim and Anne