Blog Archives

MONKEY BUSINESS, MONKEY BREAD

1/31/2018

Today we had the pleasure of making Monkey Bread with Silas and his mom Miss Brooke. It was delicious, easy, fun, and we learned a little more about Silas too. Like did you know Silas has a monkey for a relative? His great-grandfather, Chester Hayes, was an entertainer in Hollywood. He trained monkeys for movies he had a monkey.

Monkey Bread is quick, easy, and great for making at home on a rainy day!

Yum! Yum! Yum!

What you need:
2 cans (1 lb. each) large biscuits - the kind with Box Tops, of course!**
1 cup sugar
3 tsp. cinnamon
2 sticks butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
Bundt pan
1 gallon Ziploc bag
A monkey or two to help. Use a kid if you don't have a monkey!
What you do:
Heat the oven to 325. Crack open the biscuits and cut in quarters. Mix cinnamon and sugar in the Ziploc bag. Add the dough pieces and seal. Shake the bag until everything is covered. Put the pieces in the Budnt pan and set aside. Melt the butter and brown sugar and pour over the biscuit pieces until evenly coated. Bake for 30-40 minutes and let cool for 15. Flip the pan, pull apart, and enjoy like a monkey!

TAKE A CLOSE LOOK

1/30/2018

Today we worked on our close reading skills. We had to answer questions using direct evidence from the text. We already know a lot about owls, so it was challenging to separate our prior knowledge from our brand new knowledge. We did a great job reading closely, pulling out the important details, and drawing conclusions based on evidence from the text.

Here's why we decided direct evidence is important:

Scenario Number One: Miss Kylie's snack is missing. She's very hungry and she blames you. You have to give up your snack. Is that fair?
Scenario Number Two: Miss Kylie's snack is missing and the wrapper is in your pocket. She's very hungry and she blames you. You have to give up your snack? Is that fair?
The Evidence: Snack is a big deal around here, so if you have to give up your snack, you're going to want to make sure there's concrete evidence linking you to the missing snack :)

LIKE VISITING AN OLD FRIEND

1/29/2018

Today we visited our friend, the three act task. It's been a while since we've done one, but we picked up right where we left off! Today the questions was about Munchos. What? Take a look.

the Snack Machine from Graham Fletcher on Vimeo.

Hmmmm. Well those Munchos do look good and we want to know how much they cost. We're getting pretty good at working with money, maybe we have enough to take a trip to the vending machine. But we need some more information. Here's what we wanted to know.

the Snack Machine (Act-2) from Graham Fletcher on Vimeo.

Over on the left is the amount of money she deposited into the vending machine. We figured out she put in a nickel and then three quarters. Down below is the money she got back in return. We know two dimes is 20 cents. Now we have to figure out the difference to know how much the vending machine kept for the Munchos.

the Snack Machine from Graham Fletcher on Vimeo.

Well, 80-20=60. There are many ways to solve it, but any way you go about it those Munchos cost 60 cents. Next up....how many different ways can you make 60 cents?

LET'S LIVE IN A WORLD WITH MORE HIGH-FIVES

1/26/2018

Valentine's Day is coming up so we're talking the time to work on a very important skill...HIGH FIVES! Just kidding, we're working on kindness, which is just as important. Today we made some hearts to show our pledge to kindness this month. We're talked about positive space and negative space with these hearts. Just like you can have positive and negative in art you can have positive and negative in life. We're working on focusing on the positive and choosing kind!

For Valentine's Day we're giving each person in our class a compliment. We figured out that when we're done we will have collectively written 380 compliments! That's a whole lot of good we're putting into the world.

FOR THE LOVE OF SPELLING, GRAMMAR, AND HANDWRITING

1/25/2018

We've been focusing on conventions more lately. They're not always fun, but they're definitely necessary. We spend time working on lowercase letter formation, we spend time making sure words are spelled correctly (or phonetically), and we spend time learning grammatical rules.

first, A word from OUR FRIEND silas

EDITING/GRAMMAR PRACTICE

HANDWRITING PRACTICE

PROPER LOWERCASE LETTER FORMATION

We were also lucky enough today to have a secret reader, Mr. Brian, share a hilarious story with us. Skippyjon Jones in the Dog House is quite comical. Have you ever heard of a Siamese cat wanting to be a Chihuahua? Well Skippyjon Jones has quite the imagination. These books are not to be missed; you can even sing along. Thanks Brian!

CAN YOU MAKE SNOW?

1/24/2018

Today, our scientist of the week, Dayanara, asked us if we could make snow, right here and right now in the classroom. Turns out if you mix a few common household ingredients together, you get some pretty convincing snow. She showed us three ways to make snow, each with three very different textures. Check out the ingredients below and try this experiment at home! Just mix the ingredients below until the texture feels right to you. Thanks for sharing Dayanara!

Shaving Cream and Corn Starch

Diaper Filling and Water

Baking Soda and Conditioner

Needless to say, we had a blast playing in the snow!

SLIPPING AND SLIDING

1/23/2018

Sure was the picture perfect day to spend out on the snow. Thank you for all the help that made our day possible and spectacular. We can't wait to go again!

A DAY TO REMEMBER

1/19/2018

Global Warming's Toll on Coral Reefs: As If They're 'Ravaged by War'

Norah, our second reporter this week, shared a fascinating article about the coral reefs. Increasing ocean temperatures causes coral reef bleaching, basically the reefs turn white and die. Unfortunately, this means that a quarter of the fishes homes are now gone. Many fish and marine species rely on coral reefs for nutrients, shelter, and safely. We took a moment to talk about global warming and came up with some great ideas. Instead of always riding in cars we'll start walking and riding our bikes. When the sunlight hits our classroom we can turn out the lights and work with natural light. As Dr. Suess says: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." Thanks Norah!

Then we heard from another one of our friends, the scientist of the week, Coco. She asked us what would happen if you put rocks in a rock tumbler for four weeks. We had some good ideas like they would get polished, they would break up into smaller pieces, or they would turn to sand. Turns out they get super polished, shiny, and look totally different than when they went into the tumbler.

From top left clockwise, zero weeks, 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks in the tumbler.

The rock tumbler after four weeks about the reveal it's shiny, polished gems.

The beautiful rocks after four weeks rolling around in various kinds of sand.

Thank you Coco! We're all especially excited to get to take one of these beauties home!

Finally, we had a visit from a secret reader, Miss Anita, Boti's mom. She shared a hilarious book called A Bad Case of the Stripes. This book is all about the struggle between fitting in and being true to who you are. Next time you're feeling a little stripy or polka dotty embrace it and don't be afraid to be you. In this little girls case, Lima beans were just what she needed. If only she hadn't been afraid to be made fun of.

IT'S GONNA BE A BRIGHT SUNSHINY DAY

1/18/2018

Exquisite Fossils Showed Butterflies Appeared Before there were Flowers to Pollinate

Our fabulous reporter of the week, Mr. Kai, shared with us some fascinating facts you might not know about the butterfly. Scientists have discovered butterfly fossils dating back to 201 million years ago. However, flowers only date back to 130 million years ago. Hmmm. So butterflies used to look different? Turns out the butterfly evolved and developed the proboscis, it's straw like tongue, in it's current form once flowers started to appear. So cool. I think we have some future paleontologists in the room. Thanks Kai!

What a perfectly sunny day out on the playground!

BOX TOPS FOR EDUCATION, BOX TOPS FOR TEAMWORK

1/17/2018

Math is pretty useful stuff! Sometimes it's hard to remember that though when you just do math in the vacuum of the classroom. So, today we took a detour into the practical world and counted up our box tops. We had to work with partners, decide how to count them, keep track, and double check our work. It was harder than we thought it would be. But our counting paid off, we have...drum roll please...540 box tops. Woohoo! Don't stop now, keep collecting.