A ferocious Dragon-Snowman-Robot!
“What’s Inside Me” this week?…BONES!
Alphas’ appreciation of their brains made them realize just how important it was to keep them safe and protected. Reeder even made a helmet for his Travel Buddy when he took it for a ride on his bike! We learned that our bodies come with some protection: bones. In our skeletal system, we have bones that protect and bones that provide structure. Protector bones are our “axial” bones because they are in line with the middle part of our body – like this axis the Earth spins on – Alphas pointed out the skull, spinal column, ribs, and hips – and figured out what they were all there to protect. We made models of our spines…(alas, no photos available at time of publishing).
We learned that our bodies are symmetrical in many ways…
Soooo many choices…
Art always provides an opportunity for self-expression…. 😀
We learned that there are good reasons we have long bones and short bones in our Appendicular Skeleton…
What our Alpha class might look like if we were boneless…
Bones help us balance…and it was easy to see how much better the tiny bones in our hands helped us pick things up…It was WAY harder to write with our toes…OR walk on our hands!
We learned that our bones weren’t always hard – we start out pretty rubbery in our mamas’ tummies! Our bones are mostly cartilage at birth!
We learned that our bodies use calcium every time our muscles move (which is all the time); not only do our bones need calcium to build hard bones, but our bones are like a bank – they store calcium. Osteoclasts dig out teenie bits of calcium every time we move!
We learned that our bones are ALSO our body’s blood factory! That spongy part of the bone is where fresh blood is made!
Alphas tried many foods that were excellent choices for bone health…
alphas acting out how inflammation happens when our cells fight for molecules…Antioxidants are our Rainbow Food Defenders to the rescue!
You can have all the calcium in the world – but it won’t stuck to your bones unless you have something that will hold it there, just like bricks need mortar! Vitamin K is like mortar for our calcium~
This bread is a model of calcium adhering to bone… To get calcium to help build stronger and harder bones, we need to do exercises that pound, bounce, push, and/or pull us towards and away from the Earth’s gravity- these are what we call “resistance” exercises!
Alphas covering sponge-y “cartilage” with “calcium…”
Bone-Food Extravaganza!!!!
Cabbage and leafy greens are a great source of calcium…Yogurt is also a fantastic source of calcium…and who knew cabbage could be such a tasty vehicle for yogurt!
We need Vitamin K to get calcium to stick to our bones and snap peas and other green veggies provide that!
Bright and beautiful carrots are a great source of antioxidants and can help us get hummus into our mouths! Hummus is made from a great source of iron (which helps us absorb oxygen), and the vitamin C in carrots helps pull that iron out of the garbanzo beans in the HUMMUS!
Cucumbers are a great source of Vitamin K and taste surprisingly good with yogurt too!
Only guavas and kiwis can out-Vitamin C Red Bell Peppers!
Only guavas, kiwis, and red peppers can out-Vitamin C STRAWBERRIES!
Shopping for bone-food!
In Math…
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes…
…learned about symmetry…
…and added “one more” each day on our calendar – and when we reached our tenth day of the month, we ran out of fingers – so we grouped them into 1 group of ten…in fact, we had some fun making many groups of ten… plus an extra digit or two…
…we learned that the “equal sign” works a little bit like the line of symmetry, in that everything on one side of the equal sign balances out with the other side of it.
…ways to make 5…
We also had fun with some open-ended questions and had an interesting discussion about the word “few;” people have different ideas about what that’s worth!
Ms. Emma’s Math Wizards…
Tackled place value! With the help of lots of blocks to help visualize these increasingly large numbers.
tens and ones…tens and ones…
Always time for a few domino creations!
Then we began the process of creating our class numberline!
Voila!
Adding up to ten by playing Pyramid 10
In ELA…
Ms. Kim’s group…
We met and practiced writing letters s, r, i, and p. We made new words with all the letters we learned. We found rhyming words, and “chopped” each sound in words… we learned that every word has a vowel (like “a” and “i”) in it!
We used our “movable alphabet,” better known as “Our Computers,” to build words…
We shared our words from our P&P. Alphas sounded out the words and helped spell them. We encourage using “inventive spelling”! It helps our students to practice listening carefully to words and connect letter-symbols to the sounds they hear. When they learn new patterns and spelling rules, they will easily apply them. We want our students to feel confident when they write, and we find inventive spelling is a key piece in building that! If your audience can sound out what you write, they can read it.
…and we read Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon, and discussed her outside attributes and her inside attributes. We learned that writers and illustrators use words and pictures to give us lots of information about characters in stories.
…some of our personal favorite illustrations…
Ms. Emma’s group…
This week began by watching a read-aloud of a story named The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. We used this story about a misbehaving dog entering a magician’s garden to look at the setting.
We introduced two digraphs this week! Our “sh” and “ch” sounds made for very long student-invented word lists.
Then we used our “computers” to build a few of these words.
We made letters with playdough….
And a few food-based creations…
One of our dance parties to aid in the transition between math and ELA….
In Other News…
Happy Birthday, Willow! The Alpha class thinks you make an incredible baby dragon! We hope your next sun lap is as great as you are!
And thank you so much for the delicious popsicles!
Monday gym keeps us moving!
