Collecting Moons

Over the holiday weekend we had lots of families observing and taking pictures of the moon for Room 408.  Here are some of the great shots!

Zane's dad also sent us some pictures of the blood moon from earlier this fall as well as another beautiful cresent moon picture.

A few parents sent me these cool moon pictures, as well.  What patience on the part of the photographer!

What do you wonder about the moon?

Earth & Space: Systems & Cycles Inquiry

We kicked off our first big curricular inquiry!  We will be focusing on the systems and cycles of earth and space.

Yesterday we thought about our schema (what we think we know) and shared our thinking with each other.

Today we started by reading a book about cycles.

We talked about the first stage of inquiry:  The Immersion Stage.  We discussed how during this stage our brains are like sponges, soaking up new learning as we immerse ourselves in our earth & space resources.  

We are also learning to leave tracks of our thinking on sticky notes and code it with an 'L' for learning or a '?' for our wonders.  We immersed ourselves in earth & space books--the excitement was contagious!  We gathered new learning, helped each other find answers to our wonders, and could even confirm some of our schema.

Look at all of our new learning and wonders!

Our Special Guest: Oliver!

I forgot to do a special post in November about when Zane and his mom shared his pet snake, Oliver. Better late, than never!
We loved asking questions about Oliver, touching him, and learning about him!

Watch this video to experience Oliver for yourself!

Thanks for sharing Oliver with us, Fletcher Family!

November Learning Mural Day

Once again we have reached the end of another busy month that was short, but full of learning!  We love Learning Mural Day in Room 408.

We worked on our collaboration skills while reflecting on and representing our November learning.

Here is the finished product!

Coconut Mini-Inquiry

One of our favorite songs to sing together is "Open Up the Coconut" by Roger Day from his album, "Ready to Fly."

In his song, Roger Day sings about all the ways he could think of to open up a coconut (mostly ridiculous!).  You can hear the song that inspired our inquiry here:

We started our inquiry by brainstorming our schema about coconuts. We knew they were hard to open, but we also heard that more people get killed by coconuts than by sharks each year!  We wondered about this, as well as how big they are, what they taste like, and where they come from.

Each group got a coconut and used our five senses to make observations.

 We smelled...

We listened...

We measured...

We looked closely...

Some even noticed that the coconuts came with a label, which helped us learn new information.

Of course, we recorded our observations and thinking in our Think Books!

We also weighed the coconuts and put them in order from lightest to heaviest.

When it came time to open up the coconuts we tried some of Roger Day's strategies from the song, like finding an elephant to sit down on it until the shell breaks...

...or rubbing it underneath our arms until everybody laughs...

Since none of those worked, we tried his strategy of a hammer and a nail--but that was even tricky!  After many attempts we finally got it open.

We taste-tested various coconut drinks and snacks.

sweetened coconut strips

toasted coconut flakes

There were mixed reviews.

Some other cool facts we learned are that coconuts are actually seeds (not nuts), and monkeys are actually trained to climb coconut palms and harvest the coconuts, and it is very dangerous for the farmer because he has to watch out for falling coconuts.

What are you wondering about coconuts?  Do you like snacks/food made from coconuts?