Talent Show 2012

Talent Show in Music Class! Wow, these kids have skills!

It's a Cow Eye!

What a great way to end our unit on the eye! Thank you Nurse Twyla and two wonderful student nurses!  What an awesome real life experience!!

Wow!  So much to see and learn

Byron is investigating the lens and cornea

Look at the blue iris

What is that liquid?  It's the Vitreous body that helps shape the eye!

This is the hole for the pupil

Special Guest

We had a special surprise today!  Talia's Grandma came to visit our class!  She read a winter story and brought a fun snowman activity! She also left us stickers and snowman bags.  Everybody was so respectful and caring to our visitor.  I was so proud of all the students!  

Researching Animals

The students enjoyed the last project of "Animals and Their Needs!"  They used computers and books to research and present information about their favorite animal!  

                                               The boys are researching snakes!

                                          Talia is learning about koala bears!

P.I.E. Partners Visit

Our P.I.E. Partners, BV Clinic, came to visit us and brought sugar cookies!  The kids had so much fun decorating them with frosting and chocolate chips!  

Byron is concentrating on making his cookie perfect!

Jose is working hard on his cookie!

Haley being goofy!

Goldfish!

We started our Science unit last week, "Animals and Their Needs."  The kids were so excited to be able to care for their own goldfish!  They were real scientists when they observed, investigated, and recorded important information in their Science journals!

Prairie Heritage Center

It was a little chilly, but we still had a great time on our field trip!  We learned so much about many different kinds of animals! Checkout our day below...

Ncu & Shawn answering some tough questions

Kevin is thinking hard!

Charlene is teaching us about buffalo. Did you know that people used the buffalo's bladder as a drinking container? The kids were amazed!

                   

Samantha & Talia are researching

Thu Zar & Haley are learning about houses made of dirt

Anthony & Thu Zar are holding a rope to measure a vulture's wingspan

Experiment time!

Mr. Black & Will are playing a memory game

Making ankle bracelets for birds

Fun coloring project

Logan, Will & Byron are building a bird's nest

What a Fun Day!

Since we will be starting our Animals and Their Needs unit on Monday, we thought it would a great idea to tour the Little Lake Discovery Center in Storm Lake.  What a wonderful place to see and find evidence of Iowa animals!  If you have never been there, you have to visit it!  Ask your child, and they will give you directions!  Here are some pictures of our fun hike...

                        
                                                        Thai & Josh looking for wildlife

                                        Tired kids walking back to school after the hike

                                                             Class picture

Inventions!

Today we had fun with the Enchanted Learning website!  As part of our Communities unit, the students searched for inventors and read information about different inventions.  They used the Five W's Chart to record their information.  You can see by the pictures below that they are very enthused about their findings!  

                                               Jack concentrating on his research

                                                      Anthony researching airplanes

                                                    Thu Zar researching paper

                                                   Edith researching bubble gum

Fun Class!

Last week was great!  We are still learning about Communities and used the laptop computers for the first time this year!  We discussed Community Helpers and used the computers to research many kinds of helpers.  The students really enjoyed learning about the many jobs that are available.  I think it got them thinking about what they would like to be when they grow up! Some of them were interested in going to the website at home.  Here is the website: www.teacher.scholastic.com/commclub.  Enjoy and have fun!

* We also had some exciting news!  A monarch butterfly that was tagged and "let go" by 1st graders on September 6, 2011 was found! We got news last week that the butterfly migrated and was found in El Rosario, Mexico on February 28, 2012.  The butterfly traveled 1, 842 miles, and it was a female! *

Three Types of Communities

Today we studied the three types of Communities... Urban, Suburban, and Rural!  We learned that another name for urban is city.  Cities have tall skyscrapers, people live in apartments, and there are city buses and subways for transportation.  A suburb is a city outside a larger city.  Homes are close together in suburbs, and many people commute to the city to work.  In rural areas, there are many farms and small towns.  Kids take the bus to school and sometimes see many windmills along the way. 

See some of our pictures below as we worked with partners to learn more about communities!

Off to a Great Start!

We have had a great start to the school year! In Math, we are learning about equality.  The students used pan balances and weights to help them understand how one side "equals" or is "the same as" the other side.  We also started our unit on Communities!  Today, we learned exactly what a community is, and tomorrow we will start learning about different kinds of communities. Our writing activities this week will focus on how to determine the main idea of a paragraph or story! We are still organizing reading groups, so stayed tuned for information on that.

A special thank you to all of you for coming to Welcome Conferences! It was so nice to meet you and spend time getting to know your son or daughter!  It's going to be a great year!

Earth Day

Last week, we had a beautiful day to help the City of Storm Lake with park clean up!  Mrs. James, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Dewerff's classrooms worked so hard to pick up garbage, gather sticks, and put mulch around trees!  It was such a wonderful experience for everyone! After we were all done working, the kids had a blast playing on the King's Pointe playground.  What an awesome morning!!

Our Student Teacher: Ms. Patten

Ms. Patten has been doing some fun activities with our class!