Monday, September 10, 2012

This Week In Review...

First graders learned about mammals this week. They met Molly Mink. She has hair, eats meat and plants, is warm blooded, feeds her babies milk, and breaths air. We played a mammal game: guess the mammal and read a book called Is a Camel a Mammal. We finished up by creating our own paper plate mammals for display in our room. Reminding us that we too, are mammals.

2nd graders learned about air this week. They learned that air takes up space and can move things. We used balloons, feathers, balls, and straws to experiment with air.

3rd graders started learning about the metric system in order to know how to measure when we start our rock unit in two weeks. We learned how to use tools such as a meter stick and a scale to measure in centimeters and grams. Next week, we will be able to see what we remember as we participate in the metric olympics.

4th graders started their first unit by studying the magnet. They tested what objects in our bags attracted magnets. We determined that iron or steel were the only metals that magnets were attracted to. We hunted around the room to see if we could detect any objects that were made of iron or steel. We finished up our time with our talk of repelling and attracting.

5th graders learned about what a variable is. They created a swinger system or pendulum to see if we could determine what effects the number of swings in 15 seconds. We went through the scientific process to predict what will happen next week when we change the variables such as string length and weight.