Tuesday, April 28, 2009

This morning we watched a video with Miss Beglin’s class about our trip to Storm King. We got to see the sculptors who made the sculptures, including the man who made Momo Taro (the Peach Boy from Ms. Eyer’s kamichibai lesson).

Next, we went to Technology. Mr. Tanenbaum showed us how to play more games. One was about animal tracks and homes and another was about gravity and ramps and balls.

In math, we continued measuring by lining up an object at a starting point and making sure that the units touched without overlapping. We even measured our rug using our feet, going from toe to heel to measure. Here’s what we found:
Person # of Feet
Ms. Stern 13
Zoe 16
Axl 14
Darren 13 ½
Carly 16
Daniel 14
Emily 13
Rebecca 15
Michael 15

Instead of everyone using something different to measure, we decided it’s best to use something that’s always the same and doesn’t change so we learned to measure using a ruler. There are 12 inches in one foot. We talked about why we use standard units (like rulers) instead of non-standard units (like cubes, paper clips, or shoes). Standard units are always the same. Non-standard units could be different from person to person or home to home. We practiced on the Smartboard first. Then we worked with a partner to measure objects around the room.

We saw a performer named David Gonzalez who sang and told us stories. He told us that magic can happen, as long as you do 3 things: watch, listen, and learn. We sang a song about it together. David sang first, then the kids, and finally the teachers. The teachers sang with puny voices! He told us lots of stories. One was about a turtle who didn’t want to live on the ground. He wanted to fly in the sky like the bird. The turtle said mean things so the bird dropped him on the ground, which made his shell crack into pieces. The turtle had to go around collecting the pieces and putting them together again. We learned some new words from David. Anthony learned to say hola. That means hello in Spanish. Nolan learned that anyone who is Spanish says Coca-Cola is their favorite drink. Mia learned that a grandma is called an abuela when David told a story about his family.

This afternoon we spent some more time reading non-fiction books independently. Yesterday we filled out a preference sheet that told what our top 5 choices were for topics that we want to learn more about. We are going to start doing research on our topics. We learned about facts (the things that we learn about a topic from reading) and features (parts of the book that help us get the information). Some of the features we talked about are headings, glossary, index, bold print, photographs, diagrams, labels, and zoom ins.

Tomorrow is our trip to Storm King. Remember to watch the weather and dress appropriately!