Messy Movement

If Astroworld comes back to Houston, I have the perfect roller coaster designers!  Today we used what we know about motion to plan, make, adjust, and try out our very own roller coaster!  It was messy, loud, and so much fun.  Kids learned that they needed more force to make the marble stay on the track and worked to make the correct adjustments!

Germs, Codes, Toys, Letters and Putting it all on the MOVE!

Wow!  What a week.  It has been a week of sick kiddos and lots of action.  I am sad to say we have had lots of friends that have fallen to all sorts of illnesses.  We have taken time to try and get our hands washed and do everything we can to stay healthy!

We got our letter in the mail to Frosty - waiting to see if he responds with some snow for our White Out Day!

This week we were busy learning to code (that is the new term for writing programs).  I hope to be able to do more of this in the computer center when we return from the holidays.  We Had a visit from Santa and so many generous donations to Toys for Tots.  We finished up our motion unit by building boats and observing how they move.  BUSY BUSY BUSY!

I hope everyone gets some rest, we have a fun filled week of authentic  hands on learning.   I don't want anyone to miss the big week.

It's a Lunch Bunch, Mystery Reader and sloppy kind of Friday!

Today was our second lunch bunch.  We set the goal of increasing our reading stamina early in the week.  I was treated to eat with 6 kids who set great examples and dove right into their books.  It was a little humid, but a great day to eat outside!

All the kids weere stumped with our mystery reader.

The clues were...
He is a dad of 2
He likes to build stuff
and he is a boy scout...

My dad, dressed up as Pa Bear and read The Scout Bears to our class.  He even told a few stories about me!

Have a great weekend!

Elves, Authors and so much more!

WOW! We are back in the swing of things and so much has happened.  I wanted to take time to share with you one of our wonderful authors.  Everyday we have authors who share their work.  This is a great time for other's to learn from their work and offer compliments and questions to better the writing process.

In writing we are consuming letters.  The class has loved going on a gallery walk and hearing the kind words that you wrote to us.  We will start writing letters next week.

Lastly, we have a new classmate for the month of December, MARK the Elf has made a visit.  It is great fun to see what trouble he gets into when we aren't here.  Be sure to ask...

Putting value in it's PLACE!

This week we are learning about place value. We are building a solid foundation of tens and ones. We are learning how to make groups of ten and exchanging them for a solid group. We start with hands on, concrete learning before moving to abstract.  

Heat and Matter

Today we went in to the Discovery Center to learn first hand how heat changes matter.  We mixed a liquid with a solid to get a vicious liquid.  We then observed as we put heat on the liquid and it turned into a solid!  The kids may call this making pancakes, but we call it science!  Be sure to have them use their Scientific language next time they are in the kitchen!

Taking it to the Field

We had a great day learning in the field.  I was thankful for many things...the kids who behaved so well and were so excited to see everything, the great chaperons, and that the rain help off until we pulled into Hunters Creek.

Here are a few highlights from the kids...

Yuuki "The Power Tower" (Oh, and I forgot, I'm thankful that I didn't get stuck in the power tower!)

Hunter "building a lego car"

Katianna "running up and down the hill"

Roman "making a rocket"

Parker "rolling down the big hill"

Bianca "doing cart wheels the whole way down the hill"

Here is a link to more pictures:

http://hceyearbook1.smugmug.com/upload/zgw988/FirstChildrensMuseum