What a busy day!!!

Today in science we ended off our look at Oobleck with at look at Mars. Now you may be asking what does Mars have to do with Oobleck? Well, that would be a good question!! We talked about Mars because the scientists who created the Mars Rover had to go through the same process to create the Mars Rover that the students did to create their Oobleck Machines.

In the first part of our Oobleck unit, the students had to think about Oobleck, play with it, explore, discover, experiment, test, observe and use their senses. Scientists had to do the same thing. They had no idea what Mars was like and yet had to use what they had (pictures, etc) to come up with a machine that could withstand anything that might happen.

The scientists held a convention to share their ideas, discuss, argue, put ideas together and listen to each other. The students had to do the same thing to create their rules for Oobleck. Finally, both the scientists and students had to use all their observations and ideas to create and design a machine they thought would be able to function on Mars or Oobleck. We had an amazing time discussing and sharing ideas and pictures.

I also showed the students an awesome video showing the Mars Rover leaving Earth and landing on Mars and all the things the Mars Rover had to do in order to land safely and function properly on Mars once it got there. Here is the video:

Yes, well . . . Apparently, my attempts to try and be more consistent in writing these posts has come to naught. However, I am here with this weeks spelling words, memory verse and various other things. Here is this weeks spelling list: Spelling 0-2

Here is the link for the Spelling City list:

Our memory verse for this week is very easy. It comes from Psalms and the many of the students already were very familiar with it. However, it is definately a favorite as many students chose it to include in the list of memory verses we collected at the beginning of the year.

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

¹ The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.² He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, ³ he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Last week’s Science Challenge brought in some fantastic results. We have them hanging from the ceiling if you would like to come in and see them some time. I also created an animoto where you can see them all.

I have also included a new game in the links to the left. The games is called “Stars Over Half Moon Bay”. I am not sure you can call it a game though. Basically, you must select stars and drag them below the horizon. These stars can then be used to create constellations. That’s about it. Not quite as sophisticated as Dyson but it fits very nicely into our Space unit. Students have been learning all about constellations; how to find them and some neat facts about them. However, their final constellation is going to be one that they make up. They create their own constellation, draw it out and create neat facts about how their constellation came to be. Should be interesting.

Here is the spelling for this week:

Spelling 01

Here is the link to the spelling activities to go along with the spelling words!

Our memory verse this week, comes from Ephesians 6:1-2

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honour your father and mother” – which is the first commandment with a promise-

Well, I guess you have been good. Here is a neat video and a song for you!

beep_beep-160 Beep-Beep

This is going to be a very exciting week with lots happening. Not only are we going to get busy with our poetry (with only a few weeks left to get our poems done for the book publishing) but also with the Spelling Bee happenign this week and the Planetarium Fieldtrip happening on Weds!

So, to start the week off, I thought I would give you a head start on the Science Challenge for the week. This weeks challenge is all about puppets. Not the sock puppets that you may have created at one time or other (my favorite sock puppet was named Alfredo the Italian Sock! but I don’t have him anymore. He had a disastrous round with the washing machine) but an actual puppet using these guidelines:

Using the following materials, design a puppet that moves in at least two different ways. It may NOT be a hand puppet.

6 straws or pencils
a 12 x 12 square of aluminum foil
6 paper clips
6 inches of tape
paper
string

You may use scissors in construction but not in the solution.

I am looking forward to your results and I have a great project for our next Science Challenge all lined up and ready to go!!! This project will be due Tuesday, May. 19.

I also found another article from the astronaut in space talking about brushing your teeth in space. Read the following article and see whether brushing your teeth in space is something you think you could do easily!

On a Space Shuttle, music is piped up from the Mission Control Center to wake you up. On the Space Station, you set your watch alarm. Or, as is sometimes the case on Earth, you awaken early, all on your own, wondering “What the H…?!”

A typical day in space (is there such a thing?) starts a lot like a day on the ground, except that you are floating. Turn off the alarm. Unzip yourself out of your sleeping bag. Open the doors to the sleep station, haul yourself out.

On the International Space Station, I fell into a routine of cleaning up in the evening before bed, and then wearing a clean T-shirt and underwear for sleep. In the morning, I was already half dressed. I would pull on a pair of Nomex shorts and white cotton gym socks, ready to get going. This was the typical uniform onboard, except for when the cameras were going to be on.

When we had a scheduled video interview, we would wear a polo-type crew shirt or, in the case of a serious event, don a flight suit.

What’s the first thing you do in the morning on Earth? Well, it’s not so different onboard a spacecraft. I will dedicate another entry to the issue of space toilets and leave it alone for now.

How about brushing your teeth? In zero gravity (or more accurately, microgravity, if you’re a stickler for such things), some things are easier, like moving medium or large mass items around, but many things are more difficult. It is unbelievably easy to lose things. Get distracted for a moment, and that toothpaste cap is gone! Even if you are good about anchoring such things behind a rubber bungee, some rookie going by could knock it loose.

So, how do you brush your teeth in space? Long ago, NASA started buying only toothpaste without detachable caps, thus solving the lost cap problem. So, start by filling a drink bag with water and bring it with you to the hygiene area. Tuck it behind a rubber bungee. Remove your hygiene kit from behind its bungee and unzip it. Find your toothbrush inside of your hygiene kit, safely tucked away inside of a fabric pouch with a Velcro top. But first, take out your toothpaste tube, and stick it to the wall, using the Velcro dot on it. Secure your hygiene kit behind a rubber bungee, after partially zipping it up, so that things don’t accidentally float out.

Still have your toothbrush between a couple of your fingers? Hopefully yes. Remove your drink bag, and with one thumb, flip open the straw clamp (which keeps liquid from seeping out of the bag), and gently squeeze out a bead of water onto your toothbrush, watch it get sucked into the bristles. Hold the straw of the drink bag in your teeth, and with one hand, fix the straw clamp in place, and replace the bag behind the bungee.

Almost all of the rest is fairly straightforward. Flip open the cap of the toothpaste tube, squeeze some out on your toothbrush, go to work on your teeth. Ok, you’re done. Now what? Where are you going to spit? There’s no sink. So—into a tissue? Then you’ve got a wet tissue, and what are you going to do with that?? So, I swallowed. Filled my mouth with water and swallowed again. Drew some water onto the toothbrush and sucked the water out. Dried the toothbrush onto a towel and replaced it, and the toothpaste, into the kit.

What’s left? Any idea? Yep, the drink bag. That, I would bring to bed with me, so that I would have something to sip on in the middle of the night, should I wake. Just like back home on Earth, except a bit more complicated. And, brushing your teeth is one of the simpler tasks that you’ll perform in space.

From Gizmodo

Have a great night and we’ll see you tomorrow!!!

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.

So here we are in May. Wow. Soon your children will be in Grade 4. Isn’t that incredible? Your children have grown so much this year. On second thought, maybe I’ll just keep them all for another year of Grade 3.

We had a good start to the week today though it did start with some bad news. We found out today that Mrs. Davies’ brother-in-law was involved in an accident involving heavy machinery and passed away leaving her sister-in-law with 5 children and another on the way. We prayed for her and the family this morning and it would be wonderful if you would pray for them as well.

Lots of news this week. Read below to see what’s coming up and help you prepare.

Tomatoes in Space

Our tomatoes are growing well and several more came up over the weekend. I have taken a picture of both groups which you can see below. It has been tough deciding which group has the seeds that have been in space. We won’t actually know which seeds were which until we send in our results.The students have been making their observations everyday. It has actually been a nice addition to our space unit as students get to see plants growing right from the seed. We will be continuing on with the experiment for another couple of weeks until we are sure all the seeds have had a chance to germinate. The first one is Seed A followed by Seed B.

Spelling

Here are the spelling words for this week:

Spelling N 8

Spelling City

Here is the link to the activities on Spelling City:

Spelling Bee

Students also got their words for the annual Spelling Bee hosted here at Highroad Academy. The Spelling Bee will be held on May 14th with the primary classes competing after lunch at 1:00 running until 3:00. It should be a lot of fun. To prepare, every student has received a list of words that will be used for the competition. Only 5 students will be selected per class. To select the students, we will be holding our own Spelling Bee the morning of May 12th. If you don’t see the words in your child’s backpack, please let me know. There is also a parent letter that came with it. You can download the letter in the Box.net box to the right or by clicking spelling-bee-newsletter.

Planetarium Field Trip

Students will be going to the Vancouver Planetarium on May 13th. The permission form will be going home tomorrow or you can get your copy from the Box.net box on the right hand side. We will need volunteers. The bus will not be as crowded this time as it is just our class going! I promise! A big thank you to the parents who joined us for the last field trip. It was wonderful to see so many of you and have all those extra hands helping out!

Memory Verse

Our memory verse this week comes from Hebrews 11:1-

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Wait there’s more!!!!!

Poetry

For our poetry unit, students have been competing in a Poetry Tournament over the last couple of days. Two students choose a poem to take home and practice. The next day, the two students read their poems out load to the class. Students vote for their favorite poem. The results are being recorded on our tournament bracket on the wall. I am also looking for a way to display the data on the website. Anyway, one of the other things we are doing is recording the poems for the blog. So here are the poems that have been done already.

My Mouth: My Mouth

April Rain Song: April Rain Song

My Mother Doesn’t Want A Dog:Mother Doesn’t Want A Dog

Why? : Why?

How About Some Fun!!!

Here is the video of our daughter rolling over! Enjoy!

Don’t Forget that the Science Challenge Projects are due Monday!!!

Thus ended another busy week (like how I used a spelling word?)! One thing I wanted to say though was how proud I was by how hard the students worked for the Service Day. It was an amazing afternoon. Though I didn’t quite realize how long the walk was actually going to be, the students did an amazing job and hardly complained at all though I am sure they were very tired at the end of the day. It was really inspiring and I was very proud to see how enthusiastic they were and how well they pulled together to gather garbage to help keep Chilliwack clean and spread the message!

We also planted tomatoes yesterday which was a lot of fun. We talked about all sorts of things including learning about the parts of the tomato, how Earth is the same and/or different than Mars (ask your child how old they would be and how much they would weigh on Mars if they lived there!), and started filling out and completing the parts of the experiment. The tomatoes are now in their temporary home for the time being. We will be very interested to see what happens. The students had a little big of a hard time doing their observations of the tomato seed as it is very small and light and kept disappearing. However, we did manage to get all the students to plant one space seed and one regular seed. We don’t know which seed is which (as that is part of the experiment) but the general agreement is that Seeds B are the space ones as they are rougher and pointier than the Seed A group. We shall see. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.

Today was the first big dress rehearsal for The Music Man. It has been a stressful week of rehearsals but I think things have pulled together and it should be a lot of fun. As you may know the students are being joined by Mr. Shinness, Mr. Preston, Mr. Neudorf and myself. It has been a lot of fun learning the songs and singing with the other gentlemen and just being involved in a musical again. I was telling Mr. Shinness that it has been a long time since I have done a musical and being involved in this one was bringing back a lot of memories from my High School productions. Anyway, I found a couple of clips of The Music Man for you to enjoy.

My apologies! Not having had spelling for the last couple of weeks, I had forgotten to add the spelling list and memory verse to the site for this week.

Here are the spelling words for this week. Read all the way to the bottom as there are some other announcements.

Spelling N7

Here is the link to the words on Spelling City.

Our memory verse is from Proverbs 6:6:

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!

We have had an extremely busy week and it does not look like it is going to let up! Students have been doing really well with their focus and we have gotten a lot done! In math, we have gotten over the first hurdle with multiplying big numbers. We are now reviewing rounding and estimating. However, we will soon be getting back to multiplying big numbers. Any practice you can do with multiplying 2 and 3 digit numbers would be helpful.

In science, we have been having a lot of fun studying space. We have really been getting into depth with space and have been learning all about constellations and our place in the solar system. In the last few classes, we have learned about why the Sun appears to be the same size as the Moon though the Sun is so far away. We also learned how that relates to the stars as they all appear to be so close together so they are actually many light years apart. On Thursday, we are starting something very exciting. We have joined up with a group of scientists and astronauts to grow a set of 60 tomato seeds. Half of the seeds (we don’t know which) were taken into space and exposed to space conditions. The experiment is to determine whether or not the seeds that have been in space will grow differently than regular seeds. This is a real experiment and we will be sending in our results once we have completed the experiment.

Here are some other things happening:

Tomorrow (Weds), we will be participating in Earth Day. As a class, we will be walking through the neighbourhood, picking up garbage as a way to help keep Chilliwack clean. If you would like to join us, we will be going on our walk after lunch at 1:30 for about 1hr and 30 mins.

Thurs is class photo day. Students should wear their full dress uniform.

Sunday is Highroad Sunday. My family will be at Highroad for the Sunday service. Stop by and say hi and see how much Siena has grown!!

Finally, Weds is our class field trip to Science World. The permission forms went home today. Please make sure they come back signed. If you are interested in joining us, please let me know!

Wow, that was a lot of info! I guess that is what happens when you don’t write for awhile!

Apparently, this year is the International Year of Astronomy! This past week, they had a wonderful series of videos on 100hrs of Astronomy where they discussed and visited 80 telescopes both in the world and in Space talking to leading astronomers and scientists who use these telescopes to learn more about our fascinating and beautiful universe.

I have included the introduction video and the video about the Hubble Telescopes. There are some wonderful pictures and neat information about what the scientists and telescopes are doing to help us learn more about space. Unfortunately, the videos have ads in them. If you wait, the ads do go away.

Here is the link to the page with the videos talking about the other telescopes.