Learning About Plants

For the past few weeks we have spent a lot of time learning about plants.  We grew plants from seeds, looked at how water, soil, and light affect plant growth, and saw how the stem system works.  We have read many stories about plants, and kept a complete plant log too as a place to document our learning. We've learned on line, and used our class technology to better understand plants.  We even contributed to a Wiki with other classrooms studying about plants too.  Please check it out, it is a really cool way to learn. PLANT WIKI HERE.  Needless to say we've learned a lot. Here's a short video, made on our class iPad, showing some of the things we've been up to.

Making Salsa

Yesterday we made Mrs. Kaput's Salsa as another component to our Flat Classroom Project.  Here's our little video.  Enjoy.

Do We Know Our Frog Facts?

Ms. Will planned a super fun frog lesson for us but she was at home sick so Ms. Lirenman taught her lesson.  At first we watched a really cool science movie about frogs.  Ms. Lirenman told us that we needed to get as much information as we could from the  movie because we were going to be playing a game with the new knowledge that we had.  Once the movie was over we got a chance to turn and talk with one another and share all the new facts we learned.  We also shared what we already knew about frogs.  Then it was time for the fun game.

Ms. Lirenman put out green pieces of paper all around the classroom.  Each paper represented a lilly pad.  If we got our frog facts correct - if the fact was true we bent down like a frog on the lilly pad and if the fact was not true would stood tall like a person - we then were allowed to jump to another lily pad.  It was a ton of fun and Ms. Lirenman was pleasantly surprised by how well we knew our frog facts.  She'd often ask us why we thought something was true or false and we always had the answer for her.  It was a super fun activity.  Here are some photos of us in our frog positions.

Here are some movies of us jumping from lily pad to lily pad.

Making Stained Glass Windows

The other day we replaced the rainbows from our window with special "stained glass" windows.  Here's a little video of us making them.  Maybe you will make them too?

Check out our video.

Creating Number Stories

Today Ms. Will was very sick and so Ms. Lirenman had to teach us for the day.  Our whole class has been quite sick in fact.  On Monday we only had 8 of our 17 students well enough to come to school.  Tuesday was a bit better with 11 students, and today we had 12.  Today was also the Musical Theatre show.  Julie in our class has been attending morning practices since January and she has been practicing at home a lot too.  It was a fantastic show and Julie did a wonderful job in the choir.

Unfortunately because the show went over recess time, our music, and then math times were a bit shorter than normal.  Ms. Lirenman knew that Ms. Will had spent a lot of time planning and teaching some incredible math stations so instead of rushing through them she decided not to teach them and to do something different with us instead.

Here are a few of the math stories we created using our white boards, and counters.  Enjoy. We had a lot of fun making them too.

This is Where We Learn

At the beginning of our participation in the Flat Classroom project we were inspired by a video made by Mrs. Cassidy's class showing us around their classroom.  We wanted to make one too.  While it's taken us a bit longer than we had hoped our video is finally ready and we are excited to share it with you.  Before you check out ours be sure to check out the TWO videos on Mrs. Cassidy's class blog.  There you will find the original video they  made, plus a video made by a class in Greece.  These global connections are pretty incredible.  Click here for the link to those videos.

Now enjoy our video too.

In Honour Of Maurice Sendak

This past week very famous children's author Maurice Sendak died after living a long and full life.  He is best knowing for his book entitled Where The Wild Things Are.  In honour of his life Ms. Lirenman discovered a very cool web site that allows you to "Build Your Wild Self". She gave it a go and created this:

If you are interested in creating your wild self too please follow this link.  Once your picture is created you can put it on your desktop then load it into your individual blog.  

Build Yourself Wild