Playing Lava Monster tag, Wyatt found a great strategy to remain lava-free!!
In our Bigger Backyard…WHAT’S ABOVE US?!
This week, we first finished our Moon Mission team projects. We finalized what our mission plans were, the name and emblem of our mission and we designed astronaut suits for our peeps. Each team presented them.
We then traveled 193 million miles up to visit our closest star…THE SUN!
We learned that it is HOT, HOT, HOT (12,000 degrees at its core) and GINORMOUS! (if we filled it up 1.3 million earths could fit inside). We saw where we’re located in our solar system is just the right place – not too close and not too far – for the sun’s warmth and light, key ingredients to create life on earth.
We discovered what solar flares and solar winds are and some of the ways they affect our planet. We found out that we have a “magic” or rather magnetic field that protects us from most of the particles from solar winds, but that some are able to travel into our atmosphere through the north and south poles. The electrically charged atoms traveling at high speeds mix with the oxygen and nitrogen in our atmosphere to create beautiful ribbons of light. We call them the Aurora Borealis (North) and Aurora Australis (South).
We created suns that radiate in our classroom. We love what our sun gives us, but we also realize, even though the ozone protects us from most of the UV rays, it can’t catch them all and we can protect our skin with sunscreen. We mixed up a homemade recipe.
We worked on the next steps of our lunar self portraits
In Math…
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes…
Adeline’s on fire!
…are building fluency by figuring out daily challenges with our 0-99 chart! We sussed out 2-digit number riddles, we looked at relationships between the numbers above (-10), below (+10), before (-1), and after (+1) on the chart. We also practiced breaking sums into parts using logic puzzles! ***apologies: for the dearth of math photos taken this week :(
Ms. Eliza’s Math Wizards…
.We finished creating and measuring our monsters. We compared our size, weight, “wingspan”, how fast we could beat our “wings”, and how fast we can run to one of Austin’s most interesting mammals… the Mexican Free-tailed Bat.
We’ve been practicing double digit addition and subtraction concepts each week applying place value knowledge and math fact skills and we’ve been dipping our toes into how and why we regroup numbers (borrow and carry).
In ELA…
Ms. Eliza’s Readers & Writers…
This week, we wrote about our families. We thought about the unique characteristics each person brings to our family. We continued to work on digraphs and strategies for decoding large words.
A few weeks ago we read the sweet story of Thunder Cake, how a grandma helps her granddaughter face her fear of thunder. At the back of the book is the recipe for Thunder Cake and we decided we wanted to make it! So we mixed up all the ingredients on Thursday to surprise Ms. Kim’s group. Instead of frosting we sprinkled it with powdered sugar. It was delicious!!
Many Alpha’s asked for the recipe…so here it is…
Ms. Kim’s Group…
…appreciated how Faith Ringgold captured how she dealt with discrimination during childhood in her book Tar Beach. We wrote, we practiced spelling, shared our P&P memories, and illustrated some imaginary ones…
Alphas got to write with our new Alpha teacher! Welcome aboard, Ms. Emma!
In Other News…
In STEAM our challenge was to see what kinds of sunglasses and sun hats we could create from paper and tape.
Alphas came up with Verrry cool designs!
Fashion designs Show & Tell!
