YES! The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is this weekend!! It begins Friday, February 15 through Monday, February 18. We are soooo excited to participate in this birding event here at school and at home with our families. We have filled our birdfeeders and enjoyed a challenge of “Jeo-BIRDY” to review our birding skills.
Visit birdsource.org on our blogroll to see how you can participate.
Enjoy and happy birdwatching this weekend!!
We have been tangling sneakers and high heels…on paper. Everyone put their “best foot forward” to tangle.
Tangling Kaleidoscopes? Yep, the third graders and the sixth graders have “tangled” kaleidoscope patterns. They are ALL unique and individual just like we are.
Debating Duos? The sixth graders expressed their views with our debates. They challenged each other with their views and rebuttals. The most “heated” or opinionated debate question was the one about having birthday parties with friends and not family. Whew! The “FOR” and “AGAINST” sides expressed deep and thoughtful thinking skills.
Today us sixth graders worked in groups on our 3-dimensional challenge math projects. We are all designing a house pattern using cm graph paper. First, we are drafting a pattern using specific measurements and drawing it so that it will fold and stand up as a 3-dimensional house. Ms. D. took apart a Ziplock bag box so we could visualize a 3-dimensional box pattern flattened. Looking at the Ziplock box pattern gave a few students ideas about how other boxes would look like. For example, one student compared it to a Kleenex box pattern and another compared it to a crayon box pattern.
We also wrote letters to a school in Uganda. One student researched the languages and discovered that English and Swahili are the official languages of Uganda. He shared with us some common Swahili words so we could include them in our letters. We included “hujambo” for hello and “jinsi wewe” for how are you. We all had many questions in our letters. We look forward to hearing from the students.
Yesterday, the 4th graders “tangled” some Halloween-themed “tangles”. Their favorite ones were Punkin, Gewgle, and Jetties. Then everyone decided to create an origami piece with their chosen tangles on it. All of the paper fortune tellers, poppers, and ninja stars were unique. It looked as if the “tangles” were moving with the paper when the origami moved. We also shared tangles in letters to a school in Uganda. We thought that they would like them, too.
Today we did a mapminding activty. We had to write with the hand that we don’t usually write with; our non-dominant hand. It was fun trying to decide how to hold our pencils. It took a lot of concentration to try to write so we could read it. We wrote our names and the alphabet. Some of us are ambidexterous. Their handwriting looked the same with both hands. Ms. D. challenged us to do it more often because it maps our whole brain to work. It also might be “handy” to write with both if you ever break your dominant hand or arm.
Our fifth grade class discovered “tangle patterns” everywhere today outside on their “tangle” scavenger hunt. As we walked along the track, someone stated, “There’s Cadent tangle on the fence”. Someone else replied, “It’s also Knight’s Bridge tangle, too”. We also found “tangle” patterns on blackened tire treads on the track, brick wall of the school building, and the playground climbing wall.
In our garden area, we found “tangle” patterns on goldenrod blooms, sweet potato vines, mulberry tree and sugar maple tree leaves, monarch and gulf fritillary butterflies’ wings, and a grasshopper’s abdomen and compound eyes! We even reviewed the requirements for the grasshopper to be classified as an insect!
When we finished our scavenger hunt, we all came to an understanding about Essential Understanding #4: “The DISCOVERY of PATTERNS may INFLUENCE the interpretations of IMAGES”. One student explained that the patterns we just saw in nature are the “tangle patterns” that we have been drawing in our Zentangle(R)-Inspired Art booklet. “They are not anything new because we have had them here all along.” Great discovery; great interpretation!
Each group also finished their Symbolic Migration Monarch Butterfly to be sent to Angangueo, Mexico. One student started drawing “tangle patterns” on their individual butterfly, and everyone else followed the idea. One inspiration led to many discoveries!
Their new challenge: to find “tangle patterns” in their daily lives besides school. Next week will hopefully bring more discoveries.
Whew! What a day full of creativity, analysis, and problem solving! We even went fishing!!!
Today, the sixth grade class created their symbolic Monarch butterflies for their migration to Mexico! Everyone created a butterfly to represent them and a class butterfly to represent all of us. They are a work in progress and will be finished by next Friday to be mailed to Angangueo, MEXICO where the trees are dripping with Monarch butterflies for the winter!!
The SOAPSTone technique (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone) was used to critique a poem about anti-bullying. Our trailer was sooo quiet as the poem was read, analyzed and commented in silence. A powerful message was absorbed about “You Had to Pick on Me”. An area school’s theater group won an anti-bullying competition based upon it. We will be using the SOAPSTone technique to critique other forms of writing.
We went fishing with the Tragedy of the Commons!! This activity simulated our area water source, Black Creek Park water, in which we as groups “problem-solved” the community’s survival by its usage of the resources. We all used different strategies to maintain our survival. It was not survival of the fittest but survival of the best fishermen! The best part was eating our “catch” afterwards, the multi-colored Goldfish Crackers!!!
Wow! School has been in session for over a month and we have been so busy!
This year our concept will be IMAGES. We will be exploring and researching varied IMAGES. It’s going to be a year full of discoveries!
Every class has been busy creating tangle patterns known as Zentangle(R)-Inspired Art. This type of art is a meditative artform that increases attention span and ability to concentrate.
The Zentangle(R) art form and method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas and is copyrighted. Zentangle(R) is a registered trademark of Zentangle(R), Inc. Learn more at www.zentangle.com. It’s also very addictive and opens your eyes to different views! We began using the Zentangle(R) Classroom Apprentice Kit by drawing the tangle patterns in a booklet. We have also created collages with our 4 favorite tangle patterns and a small art poster designed with our initials or names in tangle patterns.
The first day that we began the tangle patterns no one wanted to go to the computer lab or the garden; we all wanted to stay and “tangle” more! And we did!
The fifth grade class made “ninja star” origami and created tangle patterns on each section of the “star”! Now, every class is making them.
Today the fourth grade class began a discovery of tangle patterns in nature by visiting our garden area and identifying patterns in nature. We also saw several monarch and gulf fritillary butterflies on their journey south as they rested on the yellow zinnias and the yellow marigolds. Someone exclaimed, “The monarch has a tangle pattern on its wings!” There was an unison of choir voices replying,”Yes!”. A new discovery of IMAGES!
Yep, it’s going to be a year of discoveries, so stay tuned for tangles, gardening, birding, and more brain-boosting activities!
Yep, us 5th graders had a garden treat today. Well, actually, we had 18 garden treats…we found snake eggs!!! Ms. D removed the small pile of pine straw in the corner of the rectangle flower bed of lilies and cannas. And there they were in a small pile. 18 small oval white eggs! Cool and weird and scary all at the same time. None of us had seen snake eggs before in person.
At first, someone asked what bird laid 18 eggs. Then someone asked what turtle laid them. Ms. D told us that they were snake eggs and that she would call a reptile expert to see what to do with them.
K., K., N., and T. almost finished the compost bin. Mr. D will place the wire around the 4 sides for us and we lost 1 hinge set. So we asked Ms. D if he could also fix that part. But, all agreed it looked great and we still cannot believe that it took us 3 weeks to build it.
A barrel was used by L., L., and C. to plant purple and white petunias and yellow and orange marigolds. They placed it on the opposite side of the 6th graders Circle of Life. There are 2 Knock-out rose bushes between the 2 circles.
T. also planted a pink hyacinth plant in the perennial flower raised bed. It looked great with the peach colored lily and the purple verbena and the orange daylily. And it smelled so good.
We also planted 2 fountain butterfly plants that Ms. D gave us from her home garden. She said that the blooms are different from the butterfly bush blooms that we already have in our butterfly garden. The fountain bush bloom is a long straight stem of little purple blooms. We can’t wait to compare the 2 different blooms. What fun it will be watching the butterflies and hummingbirds at 2 different bushes!
We all also pitched in and helped with THE mulch pile. Thank goodness for our wheelbarrow. We also helped in weeding around the raised beds.
We also watched a female bluebird at the nearby bluebird house. When we monitored it for the NestWatch last week, we noticed that she had laid 5 eggs in it. We don’t want to disturb her this week. We stayed as far away as possible from the house.
C. and T. set up a trellis for the yellow climbing rose bush and a trellis for the yellow Carolina Jasmine. We wanted to have matching trellises to be on the sides of the garden bench. It was hard at first trying to get the trellises to be level and straight because of the rocks underground. But the rain from yesterday helped us with putting the trellises in the ground.
Another treat for sure was watching a Great Blue Heron fly overhead. Ms. D pointed it out to us and we all stopped to watch it. We could see that it flapped its wings slower than our resident red-tailed hawk. We also saw what its long legs looked like when it flew. We hoped that it was flying to our neighborhood park where there is a creek.
