Light and Shadows
/We were thrilled to discover that the date every day this week was a number palindrome. On Twosday Tuesday (2-22-22), Ms. Ren visited our classroom to lead us in a mathematical exploration of palindromes. We just scratched the surface of this rich, intriguing exploration. We were playing around with the idea that every number on our hundreds chart could become a palindrome after some number of steps. I've included the link above in case you want to continue the exploration with your young mathematician at home. This week during content time we learned about the visible light spectrum and how white light is made up of seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. We used prisms to separate white light into these seven colors, which appeared as rainbows in our outdoor classroom. We began to research how our eyes see color. We learned that light passes through our corneas and pupils to enter our eyes. At the back of the eye, the retina has two structures that help us see: rods and cones. The cones help us see color. Today we explored how our shadows change throughout the day. We noticed that in the morning our shadows were very long. Midday our shadows were shorter and in a different location. We discussed many possible explanations for this. Ultimately we discovered that as the source of light moves, so does the location of our shadows. When the light source (the sun in this case) is lower to the ground, shadows are longer. When the sun is more directly overhead, shadows are shorter. The location of shadows change as the sun’s location in the sky changes. This week we also celebrated Ava's birthday, solidified our understanding of Qwirkle, and continued our Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing read aloud. In addition, we started our persuasive writing unit and took a trip to the library. Students began organizing their ideas for their first persuasive writing piece about the best season. In our outdoor classroom we were thrilled to discover that our pond froze and we got to play with fragment of ice. We also discovered earthworms emerging from underground this week. Several students teamed up to choreograph a dance for Ms. Ren’s birthday today. It was quite a fun-filled week!
