“What’s Inside Me” this week? OUR MUSCLES!
We learned that our muscles are always helping us out, whether we tell them to or not. One of our most important muscles is our HEART! This incredible muscle keeps our blood pumping all day and all night. Sometimes our heart works extra hard…like when we exercise!
We used a stethoscope to listen to our hearts before and after running. Alpha students noticed a HUGE difference in the amount of beats. Before the exercise, some students could barely hear the beat, but after it, it sounded like their hearts might jump out of their chests!
We learned that, in addition to the zebra-striped cardio muscle, we also have smooth muscles that belong to our involuntary muscles (we don’t need to tell them what to do). The muscles around our pupils are smooth muscles that open and close depending on how much light there is. We got to watch each other’s eyes in ACTION.
We learned how to feed and care for our voluntary muscles that move the skeletal muscles in our bodies. Muscles are made out of amino acids in foods with a lot of protein. Alphas learned that we can get a lot of protein from animals (like eggs, yogurt, and meat), but we can get complete protein from plants when we combine grains and legumes(beans). We also learned that we can grow as much protein as we want, but unless we move our bodies, that muscle won’t have tone or structure…it might be as flabby as a baggie full of loose Legos…
From shapeless blob… to sculpted and fit – with some energy and effort!
Susie’s here, working out her fingers, turning loose Legos into sculpted ones!
When we use our muscles, they get bigger and stronger. Athletes’ bodies have muscle-clues that can tell us what they do. Weight lifters have big, defined muscles in their chests, arms, and legs… ballerinas have long, lean muscles in their legs and arms from stretching and holding intense poses…skaters have strong muscles in the thighs and rear-ends…Ms. Kim’s right forearm was way bigger than her left back in the days she played tennis!
Alphas add muscle to their athletic stick people…
We learned that our muscles need different types of exercise to stay healthy: Cardio/aerobic, resistance, and flexibility.
Cardio…
Go to sleep, baby animals… and when you wake up…
Hop away, little frogs…
Slither away, baby snakes…
Fly away, little birds…
Resistance…
Wall Squats…
Bear Crawls…
Flexibility
Yoga…
We used our voluntary muscles to tell people how we felt without using words!
In Math…
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes…
Following last week’s creation of fractals, we practiced another kind of growing pattern with the “counting-on” strategy for addition equations by playing “Chasey.”. We created an A/B/C/D pattern for our season cycle, too!
Ms. Emma’s Math Wizards…
Began the week with a bit more doubles practice, this time we took it all the way to 20+20!
These addition experts used a scavenger hunt method to find the answers. Using their own basket of numbers, the students had to search for the correct answer and drop it in the doubles boat.
Subtraction practice proved to be very fun when playing “Subtraction SMASH!”
The week ended with a fun read of the Math Curse. We applied the problems to our own classroom and solved to find how many birthdays in each month and how many fingers are in the whole classroom.
On Tuesday, we worked together in table teams to engineer marble runs. We used paper and tape. It was hard at first with so many people doing the same things at the same time. We talked about ways we could help each other using cooperation. Teams went back and decided to divide up the work into different jobs, and things ran much more smoothly. Some people were tape dispensers, some were tube-rollers, others were sticker-uppers… We still hit some rough spots ( “…our marble keeps getting stuck!”). But, we learned a LOT and we will carry that with us into our next engineering project!
In ELA…
Ms. Kim’s group…
This week, we really gave our listening skills a workout as we practiced blending consonants (C) and vowels (v) – sometimes on the front end (“Cv”), and sometimes on the back (“vC”). We previewed our first Decodable Reader. We counted words in sentences and read Officer Buckle and Gloria. We learned that illustrations can help tell stories without words!
Ms. Emma’s group…
Met our little readers! These decodable stories are great for partner reading…
We also learned a new digraph – our ck words! As always, we had a beautiful student-created word list.
Using the “computers” students built many of our high-frequency words..
Zathura was a fun story to introduce the concept of genre. After reading the story, we watched the movie trailer and compared the two. More genres to come…
Finally, we looked into what makes a sentence, and used a “sentence scramble” to rearrange words into their correct order.
On Tuesday, we worked together as a big group and learned how we do “partner reading” in Alpha. We also reviewed high-frequency words and put them to use writing a list of things we like and can do! What a challenge – but we did it! Those small muscles in our fingers require graphomotor skills which need as much practice to build as weight lifters’ muscles take – and our Alphas are up to the challenge!
“Knee to knee, and elbow to elbow…”
In Other News…
Ms. Anne broke out the parachute for fun gym-recess!
The Alphas were treated to an impromptu performance from the Recess Thespian Society
Morning gym fun!
Sharpie creations…
