We had an awesome first day of symmetry today! While we were brainstorming what we already know, one student made a really exciting connection, that makes the name symmetry easy to remember! She said that it should be called same-etry, because the other side always has to be the same. I was mind blown! What a great way to remember what symmetry is always about! I am definitely using that from now on!
Today, the students worked with red "mirrors." They placed pattern blocks on one side of the mirrors and then observed the reflection, or the "ghost shape" on the other side. They then created their own symmetrical designs at their seats.
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We have finished up our unit of studying plants! We learned all about what plants need to survive, along with how they grow during their life cycles. To finish up our unit, we had a celebration in which we reviewed the pollination process, and then participated in it! We pretended to be bees, sucking up the nectar (juice) inside of the plants, and then we pollinated our friends' plants with our pollen (Cheetos dust).
Sometimes when we looked at the geoblocks, it was challenging to see just how many edges or vertices the shapes had. To make this easier to see, we constructed models of the geometric shapes, using toothpicks and marshmallows! The toothpicks represented the edges and the marshmallows represented the vertices. The kids had an absolute blast!
Even though we have finished up our scientific experiments unit, we participated in two more experiments that we have been observing daily. The first experiment was touching pieces of bread with: no hands, clean hands, and dirty hands. We did this to see how germs affect the food that we eat and why it is important to have clean hands. The other experiment that we have been observing is our celery experiment! During our plant unit, we have been learning all about what plants need to survive. We learned that plants' roots suck up water from the ground and use it to help them grow. We created hypotheses for what would happen if we changed the color of the water the celery stalks sat in.
The students were given matching sets of blocks to work with in pairs. Student A would pull out a block from their bag and then describe what they saw on their block (how many faces, edges, vertexes/vertices or the size of the block). Student B would then have to guess which of the blocks Student A was holding by listening to the clues and narrowing his/her blocks down to only one block.
The students have been taking over more responsibilities in the classroom! Now, they are writing the morning message, changing the date every day, and re-setting the lunch birds for the following day! I am all about making the students feel more responsible and in charge of their classroom.
This week, the students wrote their own spooky stories. On Monday, we made a list of spooky words and then created spooky sentences to brainstorm.
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