Fun with Words, Pie Charts and the Farm!

Hello families! 

The kids are so connected to the blog.  They are often suggesting that we put info on the blog.  I am usually able to do this more often, but this week has been a bit busy.  I hope the X-rays I had to go take will be a nice offering to show them as a sorry for having to wait so many days to show our work.

So this might be a big entry!!!

This morning, as we often do, we had some fun discoveries during our morning message.  We usually identify words we know, recognize or have sounded out and then spell them out loud.  This morning the friends found some interesting things about these words:

The friends have been looking in the words to see teams and now are seeing other words too.  For example they realized SOMETHING has SO, ME, THING and SOME in it.  And TOGETHER was making them laugh because it has TO GET HER in it!  Then Coco realized if you change these words around you could make GET TO HER!  Reading and writing can be so much fun when we take the time and look for nuances and funny things in our language.

We have also been having fun with a new type of graph.  Sometimes when we need to make a class decision we make a vote.  I love using these moments to pull out more thinking and learning.  Lately the kids have been intrigued by pie graphs.  They enjoy trying to read and interpret what the outcome is.  We also have been thinking about what information you need to put near a graph to help others know what it is measuring and what it means.  Here are two we did recently.  The first one was how we decided to use our morning on Monday and the second one was how we decided which games to play on a Friday afternoon before school was out.

We are thinking of elements such as how color can be used to make information more easily read.  Also, what is a solid title to best summarize the info the pie chart displays.  Fun and interesting, eh?

And lastly (only because this will take a lot of space...) our FABULOUS trip to the farm!  Tuesday we were able to go to the Van Ommering Dairy Farm in Lakeside and this was a very special experience.  It was very nice to see how the workings of a farm and the machines that are used to help us get our milk.  The kids were also interested in how the cows were grouped by age.  We were able to see a day old calf, to pet a baby goat and other animals, to see goats, llamas, alpacas, cows and pigmy goats, and to see what kinds of materials go into the cow's "cereal".  The farm is set up really nicely with lots of fun and interactive things to do.  I hope the kids told you all about it.  Here are some images I wanted to share- click on them to get a bigger version.  I hope you will have your child narrate them for you! (PS they are sledding on cotton seed, which is also the cows' source of protein.  This was a big hit with the kids!!!)

Also, if you want more info on how to make this a family experience, here's the farm's website:

www.omaspumpkinpatch.com

I really appreciate all the families who took time out of their week to make our fieldtrip possible, and to share the experience.  Thank you to Karri, Joelle, Heidi, Stephanie, Jamie, Lorraina, Gretchen, Sonia and Carolina!

Enjoy your week!  Love, Jennifer

How does a Thermometer work?

Hello!

We have talked for the last week about our theories of how thermometers work.  The friends have drawn a written about this, and are identifying influences that could be involved.  Here are some examples.

Then, once we had identified our theories and questions, today we read from some articles to give us more knowledge.  And we watched an interesting video to help us understand the rudimentary elements involved in common thermometers.  Two words that came up were expand and contract.   The friends realized that things that are expanding can be expanding in different directions, and in a thermometer's case the material expands up and down.

The children were very interested in following up on this.  They had identified things they wanted to understand and took steps to make this happen.  Now they are using their own words to explain this phenomenon.  Please feel free to ask you child about this.  You may want to read some of the information again.  Also, the friends were interested in trying out this experiment on their own.  The ingredients are fairly common, so you might be able to make this a fun family activity! 

http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/how_it_works/thermometer.html

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4566847_a-thermometer-work.html

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/how-does-a-thermometer-work-toulmin/6e4376a503fa8fd16d016e4376a503fa8fd16d01-597427487993?q=how+does+a+thermometer+work&FROM=LKVR5&GT1=LKVR5&FORM=LKVR

Another side element was the fact that Galileo was involved in the creation of a first thermometer. What were some of Galileo's other theories and discoveries?


I hope you enjoy exploring and talking about this together.  Thanks for everything!

Love, Jennifer

Wow!

Hello Families!

How are you?  I am enjoying this week, the kids have so many ideas and they are getting so great and expressing them in different ways.  They are such a creative bunch of people.

Some things we are thinking about are how our bodies are getting more capable as we get bigger, our farm field trip, the fact that Earth Day is coming,  thermometers and the number 4.

Here are some images from a tumbling moment we took this week.  Can you believe how flexible and coordinated we can be?

As Earth Day comes, friends have already brought this up on their own and shared how important this day is to many of them.  This has gotten the rest interested.  We are planning to create an Earth Party on Wednesday April 20th. So far they know they want to pick up trash in our neighborhood.  To jump start our party brainstorm we talked a bit today about what Earth day is for.  Here are some of their answers:

It's for cleaning up because the earth can't clean up people's messes.

It's for taking care of where we live.

It's for helping our world.

We have this day to make the earth greener and to make nature more beautiful.

We take care of our earth because you don't want plants to get sick.

The metaphor of "the earth is our mother" was brought up and the kids tried to explain this. 

Here is one explanation as to why we say "Mother Earth":

They call the earth mother because it's really pretty and the earth takes care of everyone." 

(Makes a nice correlation with their image of mothers, too, eh?)

Today Paz  brought in a thermometer and we did some simple experiments.  (You can click on the images above to make them bigger)  We read the temperature inside (65) then we put it outside our classroom while we were at lunch (87) then we checked it again inside after not much time (67).  But how does this work?  The kids had some theories and began discussing possibilities.  This turned into a list of questions:

How do thermometers work?

What is the red line made of?

Is there paper in there?

What kinds of chemicals are in there?

Is there ink in there?  Blood?
Could it go all the way down or up?

What makes it go up and down?

Will the thermometer work if you put it in water?

Does the thermometer change color in water?

What happens if a thermometer is in a bowl of ice?

If you put it in cold water and it's hot outside will the thermometer work?

How could we check what the temperature is in the middle of the night?

The kids want some time to draw their own theories and collect their personal explanations before we do more research and find the answers. So please don't tell us the answers!  We wrote on the calendar that next Tuesday we will do some Internet research and watch a video that could show us how thermometers are made.  My favorite part of all this is that they have so many fabulous questions and that one of their suggestions after listing so many was to ask someone who has made a thermometer.  Go to the source, right?  It's so nice to hear that they already know how to find more information that they need!

Please watch out our class room for the number 4 equations.  The kids are finishing up their creative ways to show how this quantity can work together with other numbers.  Here are a few:

I hope you are having a lovely week.  Thank you for sharing your creative kids with us at Innovations!
 Love, Jennifer

Enjoy your Break!

Hello Families!

I am relaxing here before the fun Family night at 5:30!  And I'm relfecting on possible "homework" or "homefun" you can have over the break if you are looking for things to investigate.  Here are some things that the kids have been interested in lately:

Cause and Effect:  How do things relate and what causes make different outcomes?
This was inspired by many discussions of wind, water currents and cloud and smoke movement.  I searched for images on the internet to use as a jumping off point.  Then the friends drew, described and wrote about what they think is happening in the image. 

Also, today we looked at a simple cause and effect and discussed gravity, wind currents, speed and weight when looking at how my skirt moves.  We discussed this outside, but I reinacted it inside and asked friends to take photos so we could investigate and explain this more.  Here they are. 

What do you think is happening here?  Can you explain this phenomenon?

Also lately the friends have been so into their journal time!  They have been choosing a topic, drawing their ideas and then writing at least a key word or two, or a sentence to go with their topic.  Our recent topics have been how trains are made, volcanos, and the orchestra.  They have a long list of future topics and many of them are types of animals, so any animal investigation could be great!



Another possibility that the kids are getting into is the dictionary.  Many friends have used this resource lately and this week I asked Coco and Bridget W to show us how to use it.  The friend noticed strategies that children's dictionaries include to make it easy to find your word.  They were also realizing that one way that is written is the pronunciation and the other is the spelling.  This was important to know since if you write the wrong one then your whole goal of looking up a word can be unrealized!  :)  Many friends have been enjoying looking up words in the dictionary and reading the definitions.  We also play a game using the dictionary, which I'm sure your child can teach you!

And our next number we are thinking about is 4.  Friends are realizing this quantity and how it works.  Creating an addition or subtraction equation using 4 can be great practice.  The kids also are making up creative and funny stories to go with these.  For example, Logan's cat that took three out of five mice,  leaving two lucky mice.

Also any chance to try to count things by twos, fives or tens has been fun for us.  These are big concepts.  This goes with our investigation of coins and their value.  The kids are starting to realize that although a nickle is larger than a dime, it's not worth more...  Sometimes the friends get a handful of nickles, dimes and pennies and try to figure out how many cents they have.  Counting by tens and fives helps when dealing with these coins.

Well, I hope that helps if you were looking for something to inspire an investigation.    And I hope you have a lovely week off!  Love, Jennifer

What a day!

The trip to the theater was lovely!  I was so proud of our kids.  They were able to sit and wait for the performance and were respectful and engaged throughout.  Then we took our walk to lunch and were able to see some cool downtown type things.  For instance the kids spotted many cranes, workers going up the outside of a building to repair the siding and different trees that were growing new leaves.  What a special day. 

Thank you so much to all our drivers for making this adventure possible!  And for sharing the moment with us!  I was struck yesterday by what a nice group of families we have.  Thank you for making my day.

I am also going to put a few things up from yesterday.  Your children are getting to be so aware of documenting their experience.  Often in our day, as we finish something cool the kids will say, "You should put this on our blog!"  I try to update it as much as I can.  Here are a few things they have asked to share with you.

In many parts of our work lately we have been talking about descriptive words and how to give more information to your reader.  This comes up in story writing, when explaining a concept to a friend, in our math equations and so much more.  We do lots of different games and activities to highlight this concept and strengthen our vocabulary awareness.  In this game I wrote out a simple sentence with spaces for adjectives.  We looked at the sentence and agreed that it could stand alone: The dog was eating food.  But then when we began to think of descriptive words the friends could see how much more you could change things with just two more words added to the sentence.  Here are the sentences after they gave possible words:

We talk a lot about painting a picture in your reader's mind.  Here, as you read these four different sentences, you can see how the story in your mind changes with the different word choices.  This is the power of our language.  I think the children are beginning to feel this power.  Each day as we edit our class journal the friends have been pointing out discrepancies more and more.  They are offering new ways to say things so that they are more clear and better represent what we want to convey.  These kids amaze me every day!

Another exciting new possibility is the fact that many friends are feeling their ability to read!  Friends have been taking time in the day to read to a peer.  And this is different to other times in our year, where friends are storytelling while they hold the book.  In this case the friends are sounding out words and reading what is really on the page!  We do this in partnerships or groups so that the children can scaffold each other.  They learn from seeing the words as their friend reads, and they also can help sound out words that someone gets stuck on.  They are so amazed at their new found abilities.  And this is so empowering for them!

Well, there's always more coming in our class!  These children are just so full of wonder, exuberance and life.  More soon!  Love, Jennifer