Leprechaun Traps and Pi Day

/

We’ve been busy wrapping up our engineering endeavors. Last week students worked individually or in the teams to design their leprechaun structures in hopes that leprechauns might stop by for a visit on St. Patrick’s Day. Some students designed homes, while others designed play structures, or traps. Students used shiny materials, gold, or Lucky Charms to entice the leprechauns to stop by for a visit. Students had to grapple with strong emotions as traps collapsed, or didn’t work correctly the first time. Students demonstrated persistence, creativity, and determination as they continued to modify their designs. Fingers crossed that we can catch a leprechaun! Students also worked on designing their final coding projects last week, which they will share with the class this upcoming Thursday. Mr. Greg came in to help another team of students work on their engineering STEM kit projects. This group is almost ready to share their creations. On Thursday and Friday we had a blast celebrating pi day! Students used their knowledge of fractions and measurement to bake an apple pie to enjoy during the festivities. Ms. Casey came in to teach more students a fun new board game called Qwirkle. We read a book called Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi. Throughout the story we learned a little about the mathematical concept of pi. We had a class discussion about how much fun math can be and how exciting it is that math is all around us. A group of students when on a math hunt to find as many example of math as they could. They discovered clocks, money, games, measuring cups, rulers, and shapes in the architecture all around us. We are surrounded by math in our daily lives! Students used spirographs and rulers to create gorgeous mathematical shape art. We also discovered that we used several 3D shapes as we constructed our leprechaun traps. Who knew math could be so much fun!

Tie Dye Creations

/

Today students had the opportunity to showcase their beautiful tie dye designs. Magnus did a great job representing our class at Friday Summit and we loved getting to read with our preschool buddies. We also visited the Pacific University library today and celebrated a special birthday. Earlier this week we continued our challenging coding work which involved sequencing, loops, and programming a game with special events. Ms. Casey came in to teach us a new math board game called Qwirkle and Ms. Linda continued her felting work with students. The weeks are flying by and it’s hard to believe that spring is just around the corner!

Tie Dye Day!

/

Last week was full of artful explorations! On Thursday students used rubber bands to tie their garments in preparation for our tie dye festivities on Friday. Several students used diagrams and instructions to determine specific ways of folding their garments to create the patterns they wanted. On Friday students had the opportunity to use dyes to color their garments. A HUGE thank you to Mr. Mark for the countless hours he spent preparing for this project. Thank you to Ms. Shelby, Ms. Ren, and our parent volunteers for making this tradition such a huge success. Students brought home their tie dye garments on Friday with specific instructions for washing. We are hoping students will wear their laundered garments to school this Friday for a tie dye class photo!

Friday afternoon Ms. Robin came in to teach us another lesson in our elements of design series. We learned all about lines and experimented with drawing a variety of lines. Students also learned about negative space, patterns, and highlighting. Stay tuned for photos of the cool projects students created with lines.

Nina’s mom, Ms. Anna, visited our classroom to teach us all about a tradition in Russia called Cheesefare Week. We got to sample blini as we learned all about this fun tradition that marks the end of winter and the coming of spring. Yum! This week student engineers continued their coding work with Ms. Cassie. First graders have been learning how to create loops in coding and why it’s necessary to create loops. Second graders are using many of the coding skills they’ve learned to create coding projects. Students have been practicing their persistence and grit, especially when their coding doesn’t work as expected and they have to try, try again!  Students have reported that coding is challenging, but fun.

Several engineers have been collaborating in the engineering area of the classroom to build elaborate Rigamajig structures. In our outdoor classroom a trio of students is attempting to build birds nests, in hopes that some birds may come and stay awhile. We’ve been excitedly observing several new signs of spring popping up around campus! We also enjoyed reading with our Dolphin buddies, visiting the Pacific library, and starting a new read aloud called Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.

Friendship Celebration and 100th Day

/

Last week students made many discoveries in our cedar classroom. Student scientists experimented with engineering and physics as they constructed catapults and launched pinecones into their air. They also gained hands-on experience with the states of matter as they discovered water in our pond had frozen into ice overnight! During our music time with Ms. McKenzie we learned a song about ice skating and practiced our music terminology as we created joyful music together. In art and writing last week we continued creating handmade cards for classmates and preschool buddies. We also designed valentine boxes to collect our sweet messages and gifts. We used our knowledge of measurement and fractions to halve and double cookie recipes as we baked chocolate chip cookies for our friendship celebration!

This Wednesday we enjoyed our friendship celebration where we shared cards and gifts with classmates. On Friday we celebrated our 100th day of school with a feast of 100 snack items and slideshow of our first 100 days of the school year. Students wrote about what their life might be like when they are 100 years old and also about what they would do with $100. Students also shared their collections of 100 items. We admired collections of money, rocks, barrettes, legos, sport cards, shells, pine needles, books, game pieces, and more. We marveled at the difference in sizes of our collections even though each contained 100 items! This morning we gathered as a whole school for Friday Summit and met in our buddy families to connect with students from classrooms across the school. We savored getting to read with our preschool buddies and got to spend the afternoon playing math board games. We also read a Flat Stanley update from Panama this week and sent another Flat Stanley to Hawaii!

Buddy Families and Coding Unit

/

This week we finished our Rube Goldberg contraptions and teams had a chance to showcase their work to the class! It took much grit and persistence it to make a successful contraption. We’ve been reading a picture book called Rube Goldberg’s Simple, Normal, Humdrum School Day. This book is full of interesting contraptions and fun illustrations.  On Tuesday students started a coding unit. They will be learning more about basic coding and digital citizenship. During writer’s workshop this week students have been busy creating handmade valentines for their classmates. Students used watercolors and sharpies to create gorgeous cards and write kind messages. We will continue working on both coding and valentine cards next week. At Friday Summit this week we added a new routine called buddy families. Each buddy family has about twelve members and is made up of a couple students from each class in the school.   These multiage buddy families are a way for students make connections and build relationships with students and teachers across the school. Today we played a name game with our buddy families. Otters also had an opportunity to read to their Dolphin and Seal buddies this morning. Our students are really stepping up as leaders in our community! This afternoon we took a trip to the Pacific Library to stock up on reading materials. In other news this week, we enjoyed our first snowflakes of the season followed by hot cocoa and snow books, we found new fungus growing in our outdoor classroom, we celebrated a birthday, we finished our January calendar, and we enjoyed sunny afternoons spent with friends in the cedar classroom.