Newsletter: April 26, 2016

Dear Families,

Last Friday was Mr. Smith's final day with us. He brought in some Korean food to share with the kids and they were very excited. One of the items was a desert pancake filled with brown sugar. The other was a spicy noodle dish. It had many of the kids panting and running to the sink!

The kids really enjoyed having James as part of our classroom these past four months. Before he left they all gave him a big group hug. He is now finishing up his final few assignments before graduation. He has a few very promising job leads and hopefully will be in a classroom of his own next fall.

And now, here are some photos to help you see what we've been up to in the classroom this past week...

MATH

As part of our study of repeated addition, we learned a game in which
we made arrays on a 10 x 10 grid.

This game really helped the kids continue to make early connections
between repeated addition and multiplication.

The kids rolled two dice. One number told them how long of a rod to
grab (1 unit, 2 units, 3 units,...6 units) and the other told them how many
of these rods they would need. 

Once they collected their rods for that turn they lined them up as an array
of rows and columns and found a place it would fit on their board. 

The goal of the game was to fill as many of the 100 spots as possible before
you became stuck. To calculate your final score you could count all those
colored squares or you could count how many blank ones were left and subtract
from 100.

SCIENCE

Our focus in science last week was to learn about setting up experiments with
independent variables. One of the experiments the kids conducted was designed to
answer the question "Does rubbing the nail on the magnet additional times increase
the magnetism in the nail?" 

To find out we rubbed an iron nail on a magnet and then picked up as many small
paper clips with the magnetized nail as could be lifted. The variables that
stayed the same were: magnet, nail, paper clips,and the method of rubbing nail
on the magnet.

The independent variable was the number or rubs we gave
the nail each time. We started with five rubs then moved to 10, 15,
and so on. The kids recorded their results in their science journals.

Another experiment we conducted was to test different methods of dropping water
onto a penny to see if any increased the amount of water we could place on the
penny before the surface tension broke and the water spilled over the sides.

The independent variables for various tests were: angle of the dropper, speed of dropping
the water, right hand vs left hand use with the dropper, and head/tail side of the penny.

We've been working hard as readers and writers as well but we plan to share that work with you on Thursday at Curriculum Night so I won't go into detail here on the blog. We hope to see you on Thursday. If you can't make it, hopefully we'll see you Saturday at the Fair. Please remember that we sing at 9:20 on Stage 1. If the kids have CFI shirts it'd be great if they could wear them.

Chris