Africa visitor!

Last Friday, my mother (in law) came in to visit and share with us all the adventures she has had in Africa as well as show us the cool things she brought back with her.

We showed her how to use some of our technology (the classroom has changed a lot since she retired a few years ago!)

Here are some porcupine quills. They are much bigger on the African porcupine!

Mrs. G. explained the difference between predators and prey as well as characteristics of herbivores and carnivores. Then she showed us some skulls so we could easily see those characteristics ourselves.

On the smart board is a picture of a spider that was in their room in Africa. Those are a lot bigger than we can find around here as well!

Mrs. G. also brought in some animal hides and skins for us to look at, see and touch. How cool!

It was great having her come in and visit us and we all learned a lot! Thanks Mrs. G!

Africa!!!

We have started our Africa unit and we are sooo excited! We made our suitcases that will go on safari with us and I took those pictures with my other camera. I will post them soon! Today we journeyed to the country of Kenya and learned how some of the Kenyans lived. The students were surprised that there are big cities in Kenya as well as all the animals that live there. We practiced some swahili words and then made a class book using those words. Can you guess what these words mean?

Science Fair

We came ... We saw... We experimented! The 5th grade science fair was last week and the students had a blast attending it. Several remembered experiments that they had seen when they were in 1st grade. The 5th graders did a great job explaining their hypothesis to the students and then showing how they conducted their various experiments. They certainly inspired several of your children!

Here BZ and KW are learning how to write with invisible ink.

BZ is holding her finished product. (It says Mrs. Golter's rocks - I didn't even have to bribe her!)

What is causing this look of happiness and concentration on these boy's faces? A car race of course!

Getting ready for Easter.

Getting ready for spring by creating a worm farm.

When the balloon exploded, confetti shot out everywhere! I missed taking that picture because I was the one hiding under a table.

BZ's Blog on ocean life

Here is what BZ chose to blog about this week. She has a love of underwater sea creatures.

BZ's say:
Here are some sea creatures and they are sharks with a blow fish.


Here is a whale with a person scoopdiving.

Here is a frese looking shark.He looks realy hungy.

Here are a lot of sea creatrs.Seahores are my favorite sea creatrs.

SY's Blog

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our scrapbooking basket and came to Arts N Tarts!

I am starting to let the students come up with ideas about what they would like to blog about. They are responsible for getting the pictures as well as writing about them. Here is SY's first blog. He wanted to write about himself and his friends.

I was the star of the week in the middel of Feb. I had a picture of bull-rideng. I had a pictuer of my soccer team.I had pictuer of some of my friend's onmy poster.


At recess my teacher took a pictuer of my freinds and I on the tire swing's.

At recess i took a pictuer of CK AC and CZ. ther my freind's.

at recess i took a pictuetr of JW and Ck
at recess I took a pictuer of Ck AC CB!

We have been busy, busy, busy! This month we did a unit on the Underground Railroad and discovered how Harriet Tubman was a great leader and very brave woman. During our study we had the chance to use some activotes with our borrowed Smart Board. We had a ton of fun! The Smart Board recognizes what button the students push and then charts it for us! How neat is that?

Here they are voting:

An example of a question.

After we voted this is one of the graphs I could choose for us to look at. The graph not only tells me how we did with the question but it gives me a quick check on how well we are understanding the material.

We also celebrated Valentine's Day this month on Friday the 13th. (Ha!) Our pen pals sent us some cool valentines that they created with a computer program. They chose words that described their pen pals and then typed them in to create an artistic piece of writing. Thank you pen pals!

We had lots of treats to eat...

and valentines to open.

Mrs. Roberts came and taught us a new song that involved some fancy dance moves. I think we got them down though!

We have also been busy doing secret art projects in order to get ready for:

ARTS & TARTS

Tuesday, March 3rd 5:30 - 8:00

Dinner, Dessert, Baskets to bid on, Book Fair

LOTS OF ARTWORK