Homecoming & Spirit Week

Last week our high school celebrated it's homecoming! The best part is that all of the kids K-12 get to participate in the dress up days, the parade, and early release last Friday! Woo-hoo! Here are some pictures of my kids and my third grade team members.

Happy Birthday Wildcats! We celebrated 100 years of Wildcat tradition!

 

 

Jersey Day - GO DAWGS!!!

Currently...

So I have seen these things ALL summer long, and continued to say that I would try one, but it NEVER happened. I figured I would give it a shot. I'm not sure that I did it correctly, but here goes nothing....

Electric Pickle

We started our Heating & Cooling unit in Science last Friday. We always kick it off with discussing the 3 sources of heat and then we do the electric pickle experiment. The kids ALWAYS love it, although they complain about the smell when it's over. Here are some pictures from our experiment (thanks Mrs. Whitmer for being our presenter). I created a summarizing worksheet for the students to do when they returned to their classrooms. **My WooHoo for this post: we have an empty room on our hall, so we claimed it as our Science Lab room! It's fabulous, we can set up experiments and keep our supplies all in one room. There are 6 teachers on my grade level, so we can go individually, or in groups! WooHoo!!
Click here for the worksheet.
Electric Pickle Worksheet

Remembering September 11th...

Today was a very meaningful day for me. I wanted to talk to my students about September 11th and why it is important to us. I wasn't sure how to discuss with 8 years old kids, who weren't even born yet, the devastation of what happened that day. My students shocked me in how interested they were in learning about what happened, and the connections they made to the war we are still fighting. I started out by reading the book September 12. If you have never read this book before, I highly recommend it! It is a book written by a first grade class about the aftermath of the attacks on 9-11. I opened my lesson with reading the book and then we watched a video one of my team memebers found on Teacher Tube. To watch the emotions and sheer interest my students had in the subject was so touching.

Here is the book:

Here is the website link we used:
Teacher Tube 9/11

I ended my lesson by having my students respond about what they learned about the importance of 9-11. I will post their work soon. A lot of them were so passionate about it, they wanted to take it home to complete it! Hooray for learning about being an American and instilling a love of writing!