Gerald McBoing Boing

Next week is Read Across America and of course Dr. Seuss' birthday. At our building, each classroom signed up to make a poster of a favorite Dr. Seuss story. Our class chose one of my favorites: Gerald McBoing Boing!

We read the story last week and watched a short video clip. We also created onomatopoeias to go along with the silly sounds Gerald makes in the story.  This week we used fabric to make a graffiti type background by spraying and splattering paint on the cloth... What a mess but a good connection to our art investigation! Today some students made word bubbles and we took pictures of the kids making different sounds. We also had a group of friends write a small excerpt from the story.  Our poster turned out pretty nice!

Here are the students spraying the fabric with spray bottles outside.

Each student made an onomatopoeia complete with a photograph of the sound they make.

These are the word bubbles and pictures.

Here is the excerpt from the story.

This is the completed poster and the display in the hallway.

Everyone did a great job! We can't wait to celebrate next week!

Retelling Stories

Since January, we have been working on retelling stories. We have focused on characters, setting, sequencing, parts of the story (beginning, middle and end) and of course retelling a familiar story. It has been so fun to watch different students retell stories in their own words.

We've spent about two weeks on each story. For each story we culminated our activities by having the students act it out. For each story we used different props (masks, stick puppets, toys, etc.). Then of course for each story the students made " props" to take home so they could retell the story on their own.

Once they retold each story the props were put in the reading area for students to use. They have used the wooden "stage" to put on shows for their friends.

Here are the students retelling The 3 Little Pigs using stick puppets and recycled milk cartons.

 This is how our reading area is set up right now.  The house was used for retelling Goldilocks and the 3 Bears... It has figurines and furniture that the students have been using to retell the story. Our puppet stage is also in the reading area.

Each set of props are in a plastic bag with the book. Students have done a good job looking back in the story while their friends use the props to retell.

Next week we will continue retelling by reading Little Red Riding Hood.

The Great Cake Mistake

We finished up our bakery investigation at the beginning of January which transitioned into a quick study of kitchen chemistry. This was a great time to do our science fair project! We did some preliminary activities with states of matter and how they can change.

We also did some mixing of ingredients to make a trail mix snack and a fruit drink as we discussed types of ingredients that could still be seen and separated.

Our science fair project was all about cake! We decided to make a cake using all of the ingredients and then see what happened if we left and ingredient out. The students chose which ingredient they wanted to leave out and then we made 4 groups. They chose to leave out flour, milk, sugar and butter.

First we made the cake with all of the ingredients together.

Our question became: which cake would be most like the cake with ALL of the ingredients? 

Students made predictions (class consensus was the cake without butter would be most like the cake with all of the ingredients). Then students drew pictures of what their cake might look like.

Students worked with the group they signed up for to make the cake by leaving out the ingredient the chose (either milk, butter, flour or sugar). 

Each group's cake was baked. Here are pictures before and after and then the cake with ALL ingredients and the one with the missing ingredient together.

NO MILK

                             NO BUTTER

NO SUGAR

NO FLOUR

The students compared the cake with all of the ingredients to the one they made with the missing ingredient using sight, touch and taste. 

Then we made a chart to record our data.

We discussed the results. It seems that the cake without flour was chewy! The cake without butter wasn't as sweet and the cake without sugar was not sweet at all! They concluded that the cake made without milk was most like the cake with all of the ingredients. We then discussed the job of each ingredient in a recipe. 

This is our science fair board and the students' class journal. Once they had tasted their cake they described it on their prediction sheet as a conclusion.  Our project placed 1st in our division at our building. It went to the district fair Saturday and won first place! Way to go!