Last Friday, the students and I had a blast doing our Oreo Cookie Math projects. First of all, thank you to all of you parents that donated a package of cookies to the class. It was very generous and we ended up with lots and lots of cookies to use which was fantastic.

The project we were doing involved classes around the world. Here is a map showing all the classes involved including ours!

There was a lot of math involved with this project. As part of the project students had to estimate how many cookies they thought they could stack. Once the students had finished estimating, the student stacked, with bated breathe, each cookie until it tumbled down. The students were very excited and we had a lot of fun stacking. The students then had to determine which of their stacking attempts was the most successful by using subtraction and greater than/less than statements. We also used pictograms to chart the number of cookies each student stacked. We then found the average of cookies stacked by the class. The average number of cookies stacked by our class was 15. Once we had an average, we submitted our data to the main Oreo Cookie project site. Not only did we have our name put on the map, but our data was added to the over 10,000 other students worldwide who were a part of this project! The students were amazed. We also found out that the average number of cookies stacked worldwide was 18. As a class we stacked over 274 cookies!!!! It was a very fun project. Here are some of the pictures:

I also captured some of the video from the event which you can watch below:

Here is our spelling for the week. Sorry it took so long to get it up. Remember! The spelling test is on Tuesday next week.

M-4

Click on the link to get to the Spelling City page with this weeks spelling words.

Phew! That was a long post! Finally, we will be doing our memory verse tomorrow so please make sure you know it!!!!!

It was a busy day in the Grade 2/3 class!! Students had a full day of fun and excitement. In Science this afternoon, I told students about my discovery of an extremely strange substance. On a cruise to Alaska, my wife and I were wondering along a secluded path. As we walked along, I suddenly noticed this mysterious substance lying in pools along side the path. My wife suggested that I collect some samples to bring back to show the students. Once I had told the students how I came to find this mysterious substance, I told the students that Scientists had no knowledge of this substance and how it came to be. All they knew was that it was named Oobleck and that it was not harmful to teachers and students in grade 2/3. Students then got a chance to play with and investigate it’s properties. We also learned and discussed how we use our 5 senses to investigate the properties of objects. As the students got to play and interact with the Oobleck, the students were very thankful that they didn’t have to use their sense of taste!! However, they did make wonderful observations including that it was green and goopy!!! I love things that are green and goopy!!!

As students played with the Oobleck, they were writing down what they saw, felt, heard and smelled and recording their thoughts on pieces of paper. After discussing all their thoughts, they then had to pick the one property they felt was the most important property of Oobleck. Next Science day, we are going to review their notes and create a set of rules for Oobleck. Throughout this unit on Oobleck we are ging to be talking about Scientists and how they work through problems. It is going to be very interesting!!!!!

Parents:

Please practice adding and subtracting facts with your child. Over the summer, some memories can become hazy and students can have difficulty remembering their adding and subtracting facts up to 18. Please review these for them so we can sharpen those response times!!! It also helps provide a solid base for all their math work if they don’t have to be slowed down remembering their basic facts. If you need some ways to create flash cards for your child, check out Flashcard Creator or just make your own on cut rectangles of construction paper. You can also buy them from many grocery stores like Superstore or Staples.

Well, I guess the math video displayed well but the sound was very quiet and hard to hear. When I get a better mike, I will maybe redo the video so that you can hear it better. One thing to mention though, the video just describes multiplication without regrouping which means we are not “carrying”. Carrying will come next. We still had some students today who were having some difficulties with the multiplication so we will be spending lots more time on this concept.

Catching up on our Poetry Tournament, so far our winners are: April Rain Song, Why?, Me and Yesterday. Here are the four latest contestants reading their poems.

spring-is – Spring Is

me – Me

Yesterday – Yesterday

lost – Lost

Speaking of poetry, here is another poem to add to our Daily Poem of the Day list:

Rock n Roll Dad
by
Jaime Adoff

Rock n Roll Dad cooks
in the kitchen
radio blasts
always on ten!!
It’s so LOUD, I have to shout,
“WHEN ARE WE GOING TO EAT!?”
Dad yells,
“SOOOOOON!”
Dancing past me with his spoon.
Pots shake,
pans vibrate.
Mom screams:
“It’s an earthquake!”
“What?” Dad yells back.
I roll my eyes.
Mom shakes her head.
Rock n Roll Dad is a little deaf.
“A lot.” Mom says.
“Too many years playing drums.” Rock n Roll Dad shouts, twirling his sticks and stirring the sauce.
“Can I go to the club with you tonight?” I ask Dad.
“You’re not old enough yet.” He answers back.
“I want to go. I’m eight years old. I’m old enough to Rock n Roll.”

. . . One day I’m gonna play the drums too.
My hands will fly so fast
my sticks will break the speed of sound.
I’ll be the best drummer in town.
I play the plates with my carrot stick-sticks.
Splashing salsa cymbals with my rock n roll chips . . .

©2009 Jaime Adoff. All rights reserved.

For science today, students were comparing the sizes of different objects in space including the planets, moons and asteriods. Students had a number of images and had to categorize them according to 5 types: Smaller than a school, bigger than a school but smaller than the moon, bigger than the moon but smaller than Earth, Smaller Than the Sun but bigger than Earth and, finally, bigger than the Sun. Students were quite surprised to find that some objects were bigger than they thought and that some objects were a lot smaller than they thought. It was very interesting. I also found a video, courtesy of Mr. Munro that nicely shows the sizes of objects in space and gives a little perspective both things we ahve talked about in Science.

We had a little disappointment today in regards to our tomatoes. When I came in this morning, a few of the seedlings had been pulled from the soil. I guess there had a been a group in the evening and some children had been using the other side of the room. We have fixed things up as best as we could and are continuing on with the experiment. None of the students know which were pulled out as I replaced them with extras I had. However, the students were very disappointed as was I. I have been very pleased to see our curious and excited the children have been to see their plants grow and this will defineatly be a project I will do again. We are almost ready to send in our results. Once our results are in, they will notify us as to which seeds were which. Very exciting!!!!

Don’t forget about the Spelling Bee next week. Students will be doing the in-class Bee on Tuesday. We have the field trip on Wednesday, the school Spelling Bee on Thursday. Another busy week ahead!

Soooo, we’ve been working hard the past week on multiplying 2 digits by 2 digits and 3 digits by 3 digits. Most of the students are now fairly confident in this concept after a lot of examples and working together. This can be a difficult concept for the students especially if they try to rush through it and don’t put their numbers in the right spots because they are not doing their neatest work.

However, I thought I would share with you how we have been working through this concept so that you had an idea as to how the concept is being taught. It is probably different from the way you were taught as I know it was for me. So I did a little video using the smartboard software, an online screen recorder and a mike. The sound isn’t the best but turn up the volume and it should be fairly good. So sit back and enjoy my dulcet tones ringing through your speakers as I speak the gentle tones of mathematics! (Warning: It might be a little choppy depending on your internet speed. You might want to start it and then pause. That way it can load a little before you play it.)

I also found a neat article written by an astronaut who is actually up in space at this very moment. He has written a post on what it is like in space. Here is the article:

Living in space is all at once wonderful, and a royal pain. During my first mission aboard Space Shuttle Columbia, I marveled at the sensation of freedom that came right after Main Engine Cut Off (MECO). I watched as tethered checklists floated gently back and forth, and it quickly became normal to release a camera lens in midair, as I removed the old one off of the camera to be replaced.

There was also a sense of dizziness, since the inner ear balance system wasn’t working so well. My head felt a little full, as if I were laying down on an incline, since there was no longer any gravity to pull fluids down to my extremities. In fact, the human body carries about two liters less water in space, than on the Earth.

But, it was amazing how quickly it became normal, just to fly head first down a hatchway, or to spin myself with a push off using just a few fingers. With a little practice, most astronauts get pretty graceful at flying through the spacecraft. Just don’t try it at home, back in gravity!

Large masses are easily moved around slowly, and it becomes second nature to orient yourself using only your vision.

However, what about all that other stuff?

Imagine how easy it is to lose something! Where did that pen go? Where is my thumb drive? Where is that photograph of my family? First place to check is the air filters. But there are plenty of dead zones of air inside, and things can be lost for a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or forever. If it’s critical, you had better keep it inside of a sealed bag, safely contained inside of a second larger mesh bag, tied off to a handrail.

What about eating in space? Hygiene? What is the coolest thing about being in space? What is the most difficult? Stay tuned, I’ll be writing about all of it. (From Gizmodo).

Finally, here in another poem for you to enjoy! Also, take a look at the comments from the last post as Stef has left a couple of really neat poems for us to enjoy!

Ladder to the Moon
by
X. J. Kennedy

If I had a ladder that reached to the moon
Up its trillions of rungs I’d go,
Higher than ever the clouds can fly
Till the earth was a ball below.

I’d put on my warm wool winter coat
And my long scarlet scarf in case
While I climbed my ladder straight up to the moon
It started to snow in space.

I’d sidestep a couple of shooting stars
And stand on the steepest hill
At the top of my ladder to the moon
If only the moon stood still.

©2009 X. J. Kennedy. All rights reserved.

A little late on these but here they are.

The Spelling List!

Spelling N 6

Here is the link to the Spelling City for this week. Remember, if you bring in your certificate with 100% on it, you can get an extra mark on your spelling this week!!!

We have been working on our Math Problems of the Day and today we have three to display!!! M.M, D.W and N.G all did a Math Problem using the Artpad.art.com website. Here are their results and how they worked out the problem.

D.W came up with the solution this problem: A telephone company charges 50 cents for the first 3 minutes of a phone call and 10 cents for every minute after. A 4 minute phone call will cost 60 cents. How much will a 15 minute call cost?

N.G. came up with the solution to this problem:

A soccer game is 75 minutes long. If the game starts at 11:25, at what time does it finish?

Our memory verse for this week comes from Psalm 37:1-2:

Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.

Have a great week!

Just a short post today.

Students earned their party after gaining their 75th star today. They were able to hold on to it to the end of the day and thus, we will be having our party on Friday. I have asked the students to bring something if they are able to. It can be anything as long as their is enough for the class. For example, if someone could donate some juice boxes, we would need 25 of them for the entire class (or 28 if you wanted to include myself, Ms. Wiebe and Mrs. Davies).

Students will still be having their Spelling Test, Memory Verse and Mad Minutes on Friday. For the Mad Minutes, we will be focusing on the basic facts from the 5 times tables to the 10 times tables. I have noticed that many of the students are weak in these basic facts. If you could work on these with them, that would be great.

Madeline got to solve our Math Problem of the Day today. Using Art.com artpad, she has beautifully illustrated her solution to the problem. You can see the question and the result below.

We had a great time in Science today. For the last couple of days, students have been studying five basic concepts:

1. The Earth is very large
2. Some objects in the sky, such as the Sun, the Moon, Stars and Planets are very large.
3. The Moon is very large but not as large as the Earth.
4. The Sun is super huge compared to the Earth.
5. The Sun is a star. Compared to other stars it is medium sized.

Today, students measured a scale model of the Sun. After having learned that the diameter of the Earth is approx. 15,000 km and that the Moon is approx. 6,000 km in diameter, the students were amazed to learn that the Sun is approx. 1,210,000 km in diameter!!

We also got a great chance to see a Bill Nye video. Here is one of the segments we watched. I think this has an amazing illustration of the distances of the planets from each other.

It was Open House today and we had many visitors come by to have a look at the class. Thankfully, we still got a lot of work done. It has been a great week so far and the students are one star away from earning their next party. If we do have party, it will be on Friday in the afternoon.

I had a couple of students bring in an answer for whether there is colour in space. Brennan was the first students to bring me their answer. His search revealed that,

Although space objects are very colourful, chances are you will not be seeing much colour unless looking at Jupiter or maybe Mars through a large aperture telescope. Galaxies, nebulae and other space objects are simply too far for seeing any colour.

Hannah also brought in an answer from Yahoo Answers. Her search revealed that,

Space has no colour. Space isn’t a thing, it’s the absence of things (although, it’s not completely empty, there are particles in it, they’re just rare and spaced far apart so space is mostly empty).

The reason space looks black has to do with how we see colour. Colours are the result of different wavelengths of light bouncing off of objects. If there is no object for light to hit, then it just passes though and we don’t see it. We see sources of light (like a star or flashlight) and we see objects that light hits (like planets or dust) but we don’t see the particles of light as they move through empty space unhindered. Thus, empty space just looks black.

Good Job, Hannah and Brennan for taking the time to research and bring those answers in for us.

We had another Math Problem of the Day Today. Take a look at Cameron’s response below.

To end off today, here is an interesting video of a shuttle launch including all the stages.

First of all, I think I am about to give up on there actually being a spring. However, it was a great start to the week. The students worked super hard today and we got a lot accomplished. There was a lot of learning happening today, especially in Science. But let’s start at the beginning of the day, shall we?

In Language Arts today, we continue on with our look at our next dress-up, adjectives. Using a number of websites to help explain the concept, the student now have a very good understanding of the concept. One of the things we did today was to do a couple of Pic-Lits. Pic-Lits allow you to add words to a picture describing it. Here are the two that we did today. Click on the picture to see a larger version of it.

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Students also got their new spelling words today. You can get them by downloading the spelling words from below or from the box.net widget on the side.

Spelling N 5

Here is the link to the Spelling City list. Remember!! Bring in your report or your certificate and you too can get a free mark on your next spelling test!!!

Students also worked on a new problem of the day in Math today. Then they completed their Chapters 11-20 test. You can see the results from one of the students Problem of Day answers using artpad.com. Some really good thinking going on here!!!

In Science today, we learned about using modals to help us understand ideas and problems that are too large or far away for us to understand. For example, today we learned that the actual size of the Sun is huge compared to Earth. However, the Moon is even smaller than the Earth by almost half!!!!! We used special solar rulers and 2-D modals to help determine the approximate sizes of the planets and Sun. We also looked at this graphic below showing the size of the Moon flattened on top of a picture of the Earth flattened.

We also saw a really cool site where you can compare sizes of planets. You can go to the site by clicking the link here or going to the links on the side. I also challenged students with a question about whether there was colour in space. I said that there wasn’t. However, on further research I may be only half right. Does anyone know for sure. If you can get me the answer, I have a prize for the first one correct that can show me evidence!!!

Our Memory Verse for this week is Psalm 100:1-2:

Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

Finally, thanks to all the parents who were really patient last Wednesday with the Worlds Math Day. The students did an amazing job and answered a ton of basic facts questions. Many students continued on after the event was over and racked up even more points. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully, we will get a larger group of people together to get even more points and maybe even some medals!!!! I created an Animoto to show you some of the stuff that went on during the day!!!!

Big day tomorrow!!!! We are joining three other classes in World Math Day. With Mr. Bird, Mrs. Couse and Ms. Stark, our class is going to try and pile up the biggest score in the world!!!! Practice hard tonight!!!!!!!!!

On another completely different topic, I found this very interesting video on the Sun. The site describes the video as pictures and videos of the sun that have been put together to make a movie.

These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This grainy black and white quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected as single snapshots containing additional information, by satellites orbiting the Earth. They are then reorganised into their spectral groups to create time-lapse sequences. The soundtrack highlights the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers of audio manipulation and radio frequencies.

Basically, the people who made the video took the information about the energy the sun was giving off and turned it into sound. While not exactly pleasent to listen to the video is a really cool close up of what the sun looks like up close. You can see the gases exploding and burning really clearning in some spots. Enjoy but you may want the video volume turned down.

Brilliant Noise from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Saw a neat video this morning from Ted Talks! If you don’t know about TED yet, it is a great site where thinkers and various industry people get together to share ideas and new concepts on everything from technology to science to language and everything else under the sun. This is the site where I learned about the new Microsoft World Wide Telescope program before it was out.

Most of the videos are for adults in terms of understanding the presentations but there was a really neat video on a thing called “Siftables”. Take a look.

Can’t wait to get my hands on some of those!!!!

I have seen that a number of students have already tried out the World Maths Day site. At least 15 have been on already since yesterday!!! Great job and keep practicing!!!