March 4th Week Part A

March 25 - Boats

Today's activities were suppose to be outside, but mother nature did not cooperate. So we had to downsize some of the activities.

Our first activity was a fun science project. We took some household items and did a "Sink or Float" experiment. We started off with a Clementine. I had assumed that if an orange would float with the peel on, then a Clementine would too. I figured that it is just a small orange; but, the teacher learned something new. The peel of a Clementine is a lot thinner than an orange so there are fewer air pockets to give it buoyancy. I was very surprised when our Clementine sank right to the bottom. I had the unpeeled Clementine ready so we placed it in the water. It sank as expected. For our experiments, we used Clementines, a ball of clay, the clay reshaped into a boat, a leaf, a penny, and the penny on the leaf. Then the students were allowed to then choose two additional items to try. To choose from we had a heavy frisbee, a plastic egg, two different types of balls, a toy bathtub, and a large button.

The students first predicted whether the item pictured in column 1 would sink or float by circling the word, "sink" or "float". Then we added the item to the water, and checked whether it sank or floated. After the experiments were completed we then assessed whether our predictions were correct or incorrect by putting a smile or frown face in the last column.

For snack we had our fish crackers float on peanut butter rivers inside a celery stick. 

We added apple wedges and milk to round out the snack. One student tried to have their fish swim atop their apple wedge. It didn't work as well atop the apple as they did in the peanut butter river.

Cold weather kept us in so we had free play. Two students chose to play with the magnets.

While the other student discovered the new jewelery box.

 

After free play we continued to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday month by reading "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" and then had a relay trying to keep a bean bag on top of their head. With only one "fish"/bean bag on their head they were able to walk quickly from the start/finish line, around the table and back to the finish line.

It was not as easy with two "fish" on their head. Lots of giggles ensued as they tried to run back to the finish line.

We rotated through two different language arts centers. Station one was copying letters, we are still using the St. Patrick's Day word strips.

The second station is doing word family work. First the student reads the word family. Then the student takes a letter and places it on the blank line in front of the word family and then says the new beginning sound and the word family. Thus, reading the word. After rotating through both stations, we had time to do some free reading.

To finish out the day, bean bag chairs were brought out into the middle of the floor and books were chosen, read, and shared.

Homework consisted of a count and draw worksheet, a boat craft, and a fish graphing activity using fish crackers.