I was looking through my pictures on my cell phone and realized I never posted pictures of the kiddos making Elephant Toothpaste, back on January 13th.  Elephant Toothpaste is made from mixing every day items together (3% Hydrogen Peroxide, yeast, food coloring, & dish soap).  The result is so fun to watch, IF the kiddos followed the directions.  A couple of groups did not mix the water and yeast mixture together in the correct way, so they did not pour enough of the yeast into the Hydrogen Peroxide, since their yeast was clumped in the bottom of the cup.  The yeast/water mixture should have been watery!  Either way, they had a lot of fun putting it together!  There were, however, some "not so fun" faces if their "toothpaste" did not bubble up and over the 2 liter bottle!

Quarter 2 Book Reports

We completed presentations of Quarter 2 Book Reports on Wednesday!  I am blown away at the amount of work put into these projects.  The students were so proud to present their project and explain to the class about their book.  

Our next book report is due March 24th and the genre is Historical Fiction.  Students should look for a historical book that his fictional characters.  Almost all of them wanted to do one of the Who was....? or Where was...? books, so I told them that I would only allow 2 of them, so the first two students to return their paper with one of those books would be allowed to use them.  This way we do not have 18 presentations on the same book or close to the same book.

Here are pictures of my proud students showing their book report projects.  I cannot wait to see what they do for Quarter 3!  Just remember, that they cannot use a project that they already have used in Quarter 1 or Quarter 2.

Princess and the Pea

Today, we took a "math break" and worked on a STEAM project.  STEAM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math.  Today's project was based on the fairy tale, Princess and the Pea.  If you are not familiar with Princess and the Pea, the story is about a Prince that is looking for a Princess to marry, but she must be a REAL princess.  One day, a young lady shows up at the castle door, claiming to be a princess, but she did not look like a "real" princess to the King and Queen.  The Queen decided to test if she was real, by placing a pea on her bed and then placed 20 mattresses and 20 quilts on top of it.  After a long nights sleep, she awoke feeling exhausted and bruised because she had slept upon something hard.  This then proved that the young lady was, in fact, a real princess.

So, today, we began with 10 sponges to represent the mattresses and quilts and a large marble and small marble to represent the pea.  Students were tasked with stacking AND balancing the sponges on the marble, without the sponges tilting or touching any sides.  Below are pictures of the students working and some of those that were successful at stacking 10 sponges.  Students had a blast with this activity, despite the fact that some became frustrated with the process.  It is not easy to balance the sponges on the marble and hope that it will stay.