Today the kids were able to have some practice time before our lesson. They practiced balancing feathers, which they are already good at after only one lesson! Today during our lesson we learned more tricks with the spinning plate. Ms. Nettie showed us how to throw and catch a spinning plate, how to pass a spinning plate between two people, and how to balance a spinning plate. At the end of our lesson everyone got a chance to perform in front of our class by themselves or in a small group. I was so proud watching all of them having a great time performing and showing the skills they have learned so far.
Yesterday we had our first day with Ms. Nettie! She started by sharing the secrets of the circus with us. Everyone was very attentive and ready to begin practicing different circus activities. We started with balancing a peacock feather. We all practiced balancing the feather on different parts of our body. In order to balance a feather it needs to be placed on a flat surface, you have to look at the top of the feather, and you need to stay underneath the feather. We practiced balancing the feather on our palm, fingers, chin, elbow, shoulder, and foot. We also learned how to use spinning plates. The most challenging part of learning how to spin a plate was not touching the materials while we waited for directions. We practiced getting the spinning plate onto our finger and then back onto the stick. We also learned how to put a spinning plate behind our back! Everyone is excited for what else we will learn this week! This class is full of scientists! Last week we discussed that molecules make up everything. We read a book that taught us molecules in solids are close together and don't have space to move around. Molecules in liquids spread out into the shape of the object they are in and molecules in a gas spread out and do not touch each other. We then practiced being molecules in either a solid, liquid, or gas. The kids also did a matter sort. They were each given two pictures and they had to decide what state of matter their picture was. They quickly figured out that there are many things that can be more than one state of matter. My favorite was the discussion about hot chocolate. At first everyone thought it was a liquid. Then they started talking more about it and realized that the powder that can be used to make hot chocolate is a solid. They also figured out that the steam that comes off a nice hot cup of hot chocolate is a gas. It was so wonderful to see many of these discussions and to observe the students thinking deeply about the activity.
The class made scarecrow glyphs as a fun way to create and analyze graphs. When doing a glyph you answer many different questions. The answer to the question gives you a specific color part of the scarecrow or a certain number of accessories. For instance if you are a girl you got an orange head and if you are a boy you get a brown head. The first step was to make our glyphs. We used the questions below to design our scarecrows. Here are all of our scarecrows. Scroll over each picture to get a hint for who each scarecrow represents. What a fun day! Everyone did an amazing job working at our table! That morning we practiced using money and how to greet visitors. Everyone wanted to work at our table selling our crafts. I even had a couple of volunteers cover our recess and lunch times! During the day we took some time to relax and read. We ended our day with some games and races. We walked up to the observatory and raced up and down the hill, which was very popular! Then we played duck, duck, goose and red light green light. It was so much fun to be outside running around after all of the changes we had in our day. My favorite part of our days was seeing the excitement in everyone's faces while they were at our table and while they were buying food and crafts from their friends in other classes! We have been continuing to get messy and create more crafts to sell for Fall Foliage. Yesterday we made more cards by printing with apples and leaves. We also used bottle caps to print to create pumpkins. The finished products are beautiful!
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