Puppet Show Videos

For the last full week of school, I decided to do a week devoted to readers' theater.  Students made their own puppets and backgrounds and rehearsed all week to memorize their lines.  They turned out great!  So great, in fact, we invited other classes to watch.  It was a huge success!  Students had a great time, while improving their fluency and performance skills.  The following videos are from our "dress" rehearsal.

Landform Projects

Salt dough landforms are so much fun to make!

 These landform landscapes are made with torn paper.

Learning About Polygons

Here is a list of websites students can use to learn more about polygons.
Using polygon tangrams, build the shape shown.
Sort the polygons
Polygon Practice Test
Polygon or not?
Create colorful pictures using polygons
Watch a video about faces, edges, and vertices

Antique Village Field Trip

Our trip started with a bus tour around Escanaba led by Mr. Aronson. He is a treasure of historical information.  Did you know that Ludington Park used to be much smaller?  During the Great Depression the CCC was hired to pump and shovel sand to expand the park.

This is the forge at the Village  

We learned how hard it used to be to do a simple chore like laundry.

This gentleman is our guide in the Village Museum.

The rules at the schoolhouse were very strict!

This is the ham radio building.  You can talk to people all over the world!

The model railroad building was a big hit.  Make sure to stop by later this summer to see how their main project is progressing - it's going to be amazing! 

Lighthouse & Museum Field Trip

What a glorious day for a field trip it was!  Students learned so much about the history of Escanaba through the wonderful exhibits and the informative guides.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The lantern room at The Sandpoint Lighthouse was amazing!

This is the kitchen inside the lighthouse.

Mr. Lindquist was our guide in the museum.
That bell from the Barr School was heavy!

This bike is one of hundreds of artifacts inside the museum.

We also got to play at Harbor Hideout before lunch.

We had a wonderful time exploring some special places in our special community.  We love Escanaba!

Fundraiser Update

We sold all of our 122 necklaces in a half hour this morning!  Plus, I took orders for about 50 more, which will be delivered tomorrow, hopefully.  Wow!!! This school ROCKS!  Students bundled and counted money, did some math to figure out how much was profit after paying back our investor (me), and we found out that we made OVER $300.00!  I think we need to make another limited edition of necklaces because even more people wanted to buy some after school!

Animal Shelter Fund Raiser

Last week our class learned about a Core Democratic Value, The Common Good.  The Common Good is something that every citizen in our country has a responsibility to work toward.  I decided we would do a service-learning project to contribute to a charity in our community.  Since we recently learned about animals, I thought The Delta County Animal Shelter would be perfect.  And since art is what our class does best, I decided to incorporate our talents into the project.  Our class made over 100 orange and black paw-print necklaces that will be for sale this Tuesday by the office.  After we pay back our investor (Mrs. Peterson), all proceeds will go to the Animal Shelter.

This is the oven-bake clay that we used to make the pendents.
Each student made several.

Tessa was so proud of the pendent she created! 

Not only did students create the product, they also wrote a commercial for our morning announcements, went from classroom to classroom and spoke about our project, designed a flyer that was distributed school-wide, created posters to hang up around school, and auditioned to be cashiers.  This project encompassed all subjects and had real-life experience.  These students are proud of the work they have done and the contribution they've made to our community.

Life Cycle of Flowering Plants

For the past two weeks, our class has been learning all about plants.  We have learned that plants need air (carbon dioxide), water, sunlight, and a place to grow.  Also, seeds need warmth and water in order to sprout.  We planted some bean seeds in plastic bags so we could see the plants develop - it's been really exciting to watch our baby plants emerge and grow!

Sprout Houses

Day 4 - Roots!

Day 7 - Stem and leaves!

Day 12 - It's getting bigger!

We kept a log on the changes that took place - complete with drawings and descriptions.

As their final project in this unit, students drew a diagram to show the life cycle of flowering plants.  

We made butter!

Students were skeptical that we could make our own butter.  But after our discussion about how hard it used to be to gather baking ingredients in the days before supermakets, I thought it would make a valuable point.  The characters in Thunder Cake milked the cow to churn butter, gathered eggs from the hens, picked strawberries from the patch, etc.  For our butter, we did not milk a cow - but that would have been something!  We poured heavy cream in a container and shook it until the fat clumped together to form a solid lump of butter.  It took about a half hour of shaking, but we acheived success!  And amazed students!