Happy Mother's Day

/

Happy Mother’s Day to all our Otter moms! We love and adore you. To celebrate moms, our Otters used watercolors to create a gorgeous background. They learned how to use a word cloud generator to create a heart shaped word cloud about their moms. Students thought carefully about their own moms to generate a list of ten words describing their specific mom. Then they selected fonts and colors that their moms would appreciate. Lastly, we took photos of each Otter student to add to the project. We hope our moms know how much they are appreciated today and every day. 

Inspiring Individuals Unit

/

We recently started a new unit called Inspiring Individuals. We have been reading about a plethora of amazing world leaders, change makers, and scientists. We are reading about artists, athletes, elected officials, and even inspiring children! As we are researching these individuals we’ve been learning how to take research notes and paraphrase in our words. This week our writers will be choosing their own individual for their research focus. They will be reading and using technology to acquire information about their chosen person. Then students will be compiling their research notes into a biography. For a culminating project students will use Google Slides to present their findings to the class. Our classroom has been abuzz with excited chatter as students share interesting facts with classmates and increase community interest in reading, history, and current events! We’ve also been learning to read and write timelines.

Our nature table and outdoor classroom have been teeming with life over the last two weeks. Last week we prepared an aquatic habitat for our tadpoles. Thanks for your help with this, Mr. Mark and Sawyer’s family! We’ve also been observing our painted lady caterpillars as they do massive amounts of eating and pooping. We were thrilled to discover several chrysalises in our caterpillar habitat when we returned to school on Monday. We have also been carefully observing our praying mantis oothecae, but haven’t yet observed any changes to the egg masses.  In our outdoor classroom we discovered that our lupine has been blooming and it’s attracted several bumblebees! We’ve also noticed the mason bees busy laying eggs. Two Otters discovered a praying mantis ootheca near the pond. 

In numeracy we are working on our number fluency and our ability to count change. Students have been setting up student stores to sell ice cream cones, donuts, gems, and other goods. Through their play at these stores students are learning the names and values of coins in addition to learning to count change. We have also been working on our money math packets, which will come home later this week.  

In writer’s workshop students have been learning about the editing and peer review process. Students have been meeting in peer review groups to share their work and receive specific feedback about their writing. This process helps students become more comfortable with sharing their work and receiving constructive feedback that helps sharpen their writing skills. Students have also been editing peer science and social studies work. They are learning how to be careful writers and editors. Knowing that others will read and review their work has motivated many students to pay more careful attention to their penmanship and writing conventions. Students are realizing that it’s important that their readers can read their ideas and stories! Last week for spelling we learned how to spell several igh words. This week we are learning about ar words: art, far, start, park, sharp, darker, artist. 

Playful Explorations

/

Our student engineers have been hard at work designing structures out of a variety of materials. Many have been exploring electricity and circuitry concepts as they create pathways with snap circuits. Others have been building with Legos, Magnatiles, spheres and rods, and outdoor materials. Much problem solving and negotiations occur during these building projects. Students also engage in the engineering design process as they must repeatedly modify their designs to achieve the desired results. It’s amazing what our engineers are learning through hands on play. 

Springtime on our Pacific campus is overwhelming beautiful. After many months on Zoom, the joyful sound of children’s laughter filling the air is magical. Climbing, running, jumping, playing, building, exploring, and creating fill our outdoor choice times. Inside during choice time students have been learning to use a hot glue gun to create three dimensional art pieces. 

Chemistry Wrap Up

/

We wrapped up our chemistry unit by making “elephant toothpaste”. Our scientists made predictions, recorded observations, and met in small groups to discuss the chemistry behind the elephant toothpaste. Our budding scientists collected their chemistry research notes in a folder and designed covers. It’s been fun to see the growth in our students’ scientific vocabulary and note-taking stamina throughout the course of this unit! Otter scientists learned a great deal about the states of matter and about chemical reactions too.

Bumblebee, Oothecae, and Lava Lamps

/

Today during project time we were able to examine a bumble bee that Mr. Mark found outside. We noticed two pollen baskets on the bumblebee. We were also thrilled to discover that our praying mantis oothecae (egg sacks) had arrived. We can’t wait to watch our praying mantises begin to emerge in the coming weeks. Today during science we created our own lava lamps. We discussed the density of two liquids; water and oil. We added seltzer tablets to create a reaction that caused CO2 bubbles to form. These bubbles attached to the colored water bubbles, causing them to rise to the surface as their density changed.  When the CO2 bubbles detached from the colored water, the bubbles sank back down.  This happened repeated to create a lava lamp effect. During writer’s workshop today we learned how to use dictionaries to spell words correctly. We also practiced spelling our oa words.