Sunday, September 23, 2012

This Week In Review...

This week our first graders learned about another mammal...the bat. It is the only mammal that has wings and can fly. We read Stellaluna and learned the similarities and  differences between bats and birds. We created a poster to remind us. We labeled the different parts of a bat and learned that bats just like humans breath air, grow hair or fur, give live birth, feed their babies milk, and can eat plants and meat.

The 2nd graders conducted experiments to see that air is matter, takes up space, and can be captured. We finished making our books about air that reminded us that air is something real and is called matter, air takes up space, and air interacts with objects. We will continue to experiment with our vials and water as well as learn about air resistance. Parachutes, anyone?

3rd graders finished up our review of the metric system by participating in the Metric Olympics. They measured in centimeters by estimating and measuring their own feet in the Big Foot Race. They also measured using meter sticks with the plastic straw javelin throw. We also reviewed measuring in grams by measuring the right-handed marble grab again estimating what weight we thought it might be then measuring. Our final event was the left-handed sponge squeeze which had the students measuring in milliliters. Students were awarded ribbons by being the best estimators between the actual and estimated numbers. Next week... mock rocks.

4th graders learned that magnetism can be induced only if iron or steel created induced magnetism. We took our magnets and used our iron nail to show how our iron nail could be a temporary magnet and pick up other iron objects. We also tested the magnetic force as it acted through space and most materials. We will be conducting experiments to see how the force decreases as the distance increases.

5th graders continue to conduct controlled experiments with only one variable. We tested release point and number of pennies on our pendulum. We found that it really didn't change the results too much. We created new swinger systems at different lengths that we will test this next week. We will also use coordinate graphs to display our results.