Tuesday, 2/28/17

We used electrolysis to remove hydrogen from water!  (Then we added salt to the water, so we could smell that the chlorine would also separate.)

History Review Game!

Pysanky is the Ukrainian art of egg dying.  Using beeswax and a took called a kistka, the wax is carefully drawn onto the egg.  This wax prevents the dye from touching the egg, and will be melted off at the end of the project.  Although we are learning on a simple design with only one color, we will be working on adding other colors to designs.  In pysanky, you must think about your final product, plan ahead, and work through a series of carefully chosen color dyes to reach your goal.  Because eggs are fragile, sometimes your hard work can break.  Although it is difficult for children, I have always loved to teach pysanky as a catalyst for talking about frustration-control, learning the different between big problems and small ones, and how even when things go wrong, we still learn through the process!  I believe that it offers many incredibly worthwhile lessons when taught in this way.  We will be continuing our pysanky class weekly until Easter!

2/21 & 2/23

The class had an entire week of research projects!  Each day was spent studying a different topic from our current history and science lessons.  First, they read and skimmed through books until they found their perfect topic.  Once they selected their topic, they dug in!  Each of them, individually, used the tables of contents and indexes to find information relating to their subject.  They learned to take notes on color-coded notecards.  For example, if the information they found related to the history of their element, they wrote it in blue.  If the information pertained to the different uses, they wrote it in green.  This allowed me to help them sort their ideas, visually, and help them to see their project take form!

After they had filled their cards and felt very comfortable with the material, we set to work creating topic sentences, supporting sentences, and conclusion sentences.  Because this project lasted for almost the entire day, we were able to work through multiple paragraphs.  But, instead of writing an essay, we used these paragraphs to create a poster to present to the class.

These two days were incredibly helpful in putting things that they have learned into practice.  I was very impressed with their drive to make it great!

Thursday, 2/16/17

Tuesday, 2/14/17

Thursday, 2/9/17

A Mayan Math Lesson

The students played a math enrichment game using cards and dice.