We Ate Dirt!

There was great excitement in our class this week.  On Monday, we reviewed the layers of soil  that we had learned about the week before.  We drew a picture on the board and labeled it with words to describe each layer.

Then we made it!  The best thing was that we could eat it!  First we made the bottom layer, called the bedrock.  Bedrock is solid rock so we placed a whole cookie in the bottom of our cup.  Next we took another cookie and broke it into pieces to create the parent material.  This layer is made up of sand, clay, and rocks.  Then we used butterscotch pudding for the subsoil and finally, we added  chocolate pudding to represent the topsoil.  We added sprinkles to represent the tree litter that sits on top of the topsoil.  We also added 2 gummy words because we know there are worms in the topsoil.  

After building our models, we took a picture of them with our iPads and labelled the levels using Skitch.  Can you see how we labelled all the ingredients?

Can you read the layers?

This is the best dirt I have ever tasted!

Mmmmm...... this is good!

I think I've had enough of this dirt!

Have you ever made soil?  Have you ever eaten it?  It was pretty tasty!

Connections! - Map Reading and Gymnastics?

We have been learning about maps. . . how to read them (what a legend is) and how to create them.  On Friday we took the map that one of our friends had created and tried to read it and recreate it.  Then we took a picture with our iPads and imported it into Skitch.  Finally, we added a compass rose. Can you tell which map matches which picture?

In gym we are practicing our gymnastics skills.  Before we went to gym on Friday Mrs. Betts drew a map on the chalkboard of how she wanted the gym set up for our lesson.  This is a picture of the map she drew.

This is what we did!!!  She was very impressed with our map reading skills.

Once we were set up  we began to work on our balancing skills.  We tried several different balance positions, using one, two and three points!  Balancing is much harder than it looks!

After we had practiced a few balance positions we worked on creating a gymnastics routine using a series of rolls, balances and jumps with proper landing positions.

We will continue to work on our routines and hopefully be able to share them with our parents in the coming weeks.  How do you work on your balance skills?  Yoga was good for helping us practice our balances!

Celebrating Earth Day

  

 April 22 was Earth Day (although we like to think of every day as a time to celebrate and take care of our Earth).  We read the book, The Earth Book, by Todd Parr and then we wrote what we especially liked about our earth and what we can do that will help take care of it.  We tried to illustrate our page in the same style of Todd Parr!

 This is one page from his book!

Here are samples of our work.  How do you think we did?

How did you celebrate Earth Day in your classroom?

Digging Deep!

Have you ever wondered what is in the soil in your backyard?  Today we used magnifying glasses and a toothpick to look closely to see what is in soil.  It was fascinating!  Take a look!

Mrs. Thorvaldson came to check out what all the excitement was about!

Looking closely to see what is living in there!

Lowell found a hard shell - it looked like a baby snail shell!

That's a worm that you see!

 

 This is a list of all the things we saw!  It was definitely an afternoon of excitement and hands on learning!