Thursday, April 21, 2016

Tootling and Super Mystery Students

Have you heard about our Tootling Board? Tootling is when you tell on someone for doing something great! We filled out over 100 tootles on our first day and by the end of the week we had over 500 tootles! Your child should have brought home all of the tootles that were written for him/her last week! Ask your super student for more details about tootling.
Last week we had a SUPER mystery student reward! Our super mystery students used the brand new cooking cart to prepare a snack to share with our class! Ms. Goodnow and Mrs. Patterson came to help us celebrate and prepare our snacks.
They prepped, assembled, and served a snack and drink to each of us. We had celery with cream cheese and gold fish. We also had berry smoothies. Yum, what a great way to celebrate everyone's hard work. :)

Illustrators

We learned about different illustrators and their techniques with Mrs. Mandigo's class. We learned about Mo Willems, Lois Ehlert, and Leo Lionni. Here are some pictures from the Lois Ehlert room! Ask your artist about his/her favorite station!
 

Plants, Plants, Plants!

Before vacation our beans were just beginning to sprout and shed their seed coats! This is what they looked like...
Hm...what will they look like after vacation?

We also worked on a display to show what we know about plant life cycles, plant needs, and plant parts. Ask your botanist which flower and label s/he created!
 



The Best Plant School

Welcome to The Best Plant School! Mrs. Mandigo's class and our class have been learning about plants and flowers. We wrote a script to show what it would be like if flowers went to school! We created backgrounds and posters as well as some different props and costumes.

Thank you to the families who helped us by donating costume pieces and props! We're very proud of our movie and appreciate your support! :)

We had a lot of fun working with the second graders!
Make sure you click the photos (to enlarge them) so you can see the details on our backgrounds!


Sunday, April 3, 2016

Magic Beans


We read Jack and the Beanstalk and created a diagram to see the bean's life cycle. Throughout the story we were amazed at how fast those beans grew! This was the perfect opportunity for a science investigation.

We started planning our investigation by starting with a question: "What kind of bean seeds did Jack have?"

Then we shared ideas on how we could figure out the answer to this question. Our ideas included ways to measure, materials needed, other questions, grouping ideas, hypotheses, and organizational details.

Based on our plan, we collected the necessary materials and began to set up our investigation. We split into three groups - Pencil Pod Wax, Romano, and Royal Burgundy. Then we each planted a bean (according to the group we wanted to join).
We carefully planted the bean using soil and a clear plastic cup (so we could see the roots grow)!
 
 While we were waiting to plant, we created labels for our beans. We also wrote what we thought about the investigation.
 Here are our beans in their labeled cups! (The labels are castles in the clouds - to keep with our Jack and the Beanstalk theme.)

 We also have a bean in a plastic bag with a wet paper towel. Now we'll be able to see what's happening to the seed every day.
We're really excited about watering and caring for our beans. We know what to expect in their life cycle, but seeing makes it even more thrilling! We will be measuring and observing our beans to see which type grows the tallest and the fastest. We'll also be learning more about caring for plants and what plants need. Ask your scientist what s/he planted and which bean s/he thinks will grow the fastest and the tallest!