I'm not sure how October is already OVER. Time is flying by too quickly! These kids had some seriously awesome costumes for Halloween! We started the day off with the annual parade and had a special visitor come make Witch's Brew to go along with our Halloween Snack. We made some skeletons, made "ghosts" go flying with corn starch and alka-seltzers as well as played bingo and met with the other 5th grade class for some STEM activities. It was a fun day! Can you guess which foods are which from our Halloween Menu? -Witch's broom -Witch's teeth -Witch's finger -One-Eyed Monsters CHECK OUT THEIR AWESOME COSTUMES (and the paper skeletons we made): Our first book report project has come and gone! We did cereal box book reports for our first one and therefore had a cereal party while we presented our projects;)
We have been flying through decimals lately because these kids are so smart! We played a "Game of Life" to review adding and subtracting decimals. Each kid got a "career card" with a salary which was the money they started off with. They then got to go around and shop at different categories such as: cars, houses, college, vacation, electronics, etc. The rules were they had to shop at each location at least once and the goal was to end the game with the most money. They kept a running balance and subtracted their money (in decimals) each time they made a purchase. Whenever I yelled out "PAY DAY!" they then added the amount of salary from their career cards and continued shopping. They did awesome! This was also a good activity to prepare them for Biz Town which is only a week away!
We have started the Matter unit in science and what fun it is! We got the opportunity to get a visit from Discovery Gateway:Think Time to kick off the unit. The kids got to mix chemicals and watch chemical reactions occur. They were so cute in those jumbo sized goggles!
We then moved into what matter even is. Do you know what happens to a balance when you take a pile of legos, build a structure, and then put the built structure back in the balance? Most kids predicted it would be heavier than when the legos were separated into a pile. But, it actually stays the same since the legos are still made up of the same "stuff" no matter how we arrange them. **Ask your kids what matter is and they should be able to tell you:) Answer: Anything that takes up space** We then moved into the three states of matter. We took notes in a graphic organizer of characteristics of the three different states we study in 5th grade: solid, liquid, and a gas. We came up with examples and sorted them into the proper state. We then did an "Ice Cube Melting" race to see what strategies would make the ice cube melt the fastest. It was so fun to watch what each kid came up with and tried. The quickest was 21 seconds and melted when being placed under hot water. We then discussed how things can change states of matter and for something to go from a solid to a liquid, it undergoes a process called "melting." We discussed how you need heat in order for something to melt. We went further and discussed going from a liquid to a solid is called freezing. (Common sense, but still interesting to discuss and think about.) I then surprised the kids with "Astronaut Ice Cream" which is just freeze dried ice cream. They went CRAZY! It was a good hook to get them interested and engaged in a discussion to figure out what stages it went through and what states of matter. Those are some smart kids because they figured out that it is ice cream that undergoes a process of going from a solid straight to a gas (sublimation.) The ice cream is controlled in low temperatures and low pressure that allows the ice crystals to convert directly to vapor without melting to water. Pretty neat huh!? Next, we are headed into physical and chemical changes. Luckily, our school's stem lab has opened which means we will get to do our cool experiments on the lab tables and feel like true scientists! This is such a neat and fun unit of science. We did a really fun project with the chrome books this week. I taught the kids how to work on a google doc as a group- one document everyone types on from each of their own chrome books. We finished our class read aloud the same time we learned about characterization so we made lists of character traits of characters from our novel and then uploaded silhouettes of our characters to fill in with that list of character traits.They turned out so neat!
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Shout-OutsThis week's dolphin dine:
-Yoselin -Solemi This week's 100 Club: Month |