Wow!  Thank you for all of your hard work.  These kids are amazing.
We are clever, creative, and ingenious problem solvers.  The world is in good hands.

Today we reviewed how our brains build neurons when we practice skills.  There are obvious things like walking, running, doing the monkey bars, reading, counting, and adding.  But there are also more complicated things...like being happy.  When we practice optimism our brain builds more of those neurons.  The opposite is true for pessimism.  Today we practiced saying optimistic thing with scoops of sugar and pessimistic things with scoops of salt.  Turns out they're very hard to separate once you mix them together. 

It was a great day at ACES.  The weather was perfect and all the signs of spring were popping.  We used all of our senses to observe what has changed around Hallam Lake since winter.

Whew!  If we stretched our library books across the field they would go up and down twice!  That's crazy.  Sometimes you can plan for everything.  Sometimes it's windy.  Today was a windy day.  It made measuring hard, but it upped our teamwork by a thousand!

Norah's grass growing update!

We love secret readers!  Today Jodi read us two great reads.  Check it out.

So after a lot of adding, multiplying, and double checking we arrived at the very big number...
 13,044 cm of books in the AES Library
That's A LOT!  Then we decided we wanted to know what that number really looked like.  We calculated 130 meters and 44 centimeters.  We made paper meter sticks that we could stretch around the field tomorrow in a mystery number of circles.  Who knew math could be so fun!

We decided to create one last three act task as a class.  After learning there were 838 miles of books in the Library of Congress, we wanted to know how far the books in our library would stretch.  We started today by measuring all the books on the bookshelves in centimeters.  

Mr. Bryan, Andrew's dad, came for secret reader today.  He read us the hilarious Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride.  We loved every minute and laughed the whole way through.  If you haven't checked out this series, it's a must...not to mention written by an award winning author.

Hypotheses: we had the following predictions for each liquid...
1. hydrogen peroxide: (a) shrink, (b) become darker green, (c) die but stay standing
2. Windex: (a) die, (b) turn brown, (c) grow taller
3. vinegar: (a) turn yellow, (b) bubble from the acid, (c) start to wilt
4. water: (a) stay alive, (b) grown normally, (c) start to rot with too much water
5. nothing: (a) rot, (b) die, (c) stay the same

We're loving working with Tangrams.  They challenge our spatial awareness!  
Make more shapes at home here.  Tangrams coming home in Friday Folders.