Making Butter

We got to the chapter in Little House in the Big Woods where Ma, Mary, and Laura churn butter.

We predicted how butter was made and then watched a video about making butter the traditional way.

We recorded the ingredients and directions in our Think Books. Then we were ready to begin! We put in a little Taylor Swift (to Shake It Off Up)...

and we were off!

Our muscles got tired, but soon our cream started to thicken.

After a *lot* more shaking, we checked inside our jars.

Once we poured off the liquid, we were ready to spread it on some bread.

We all thought it was dee-licious!

Here is a video--for those of you who want a little more butter party experience.

Little House in the Big Woods

We started reading the Little House series.  The first book is Little House in the Big Woods.

I love this series because it provides so many opportunities for visualizing, good use of author's style from a first grader's perspective, and of course, inquiry.  I try to "prime the pump" before each chapter to get Room 408 thinking about what we will discover.  For example, we viewed this photo to predict what we think it is and what use it has.  We discussed drawing diagrams, labeling and writing, and explained our thinking in our Think Books.

The kids came up with so many great predictions--from yo-yos to dream catchers to eggs.   

When we read the chapter about pig butchering and using every part of the animal for a purpose, you can see their gears grinding and realization dawning when they hear about how Laura and Mary play with the pig's bladder like a ball or balloon--which is the object in the observation picture!

These books are also great examples of how things were made and how people lived off the land before you could just show up at the store and buy what you needed.  Stay tuned for butter-making!
Room 408 is enjoying the historical research!

December Learning Mural

After returning from winter break, it was time to coalesce our learning from December and go public with a learning mural.

We have been reading a lot of books and focusing on collaboration--working together to learn even more.  These were some books that helped us reflect on how to work together.

We collaborated to create reflections for our learning mural, and we also collaborated to clean up after ourselves!

Here is our finished December Learning Mural.  We learned so much in such a short month!

Space Videos

We found some great videos to watch in order to learn about life as an astronaut in space.
A tour of the International Space Station (ISS):
Washing your hair in space... The Mars Rover: We also experienced a space shuttle launch.
This one has actual cameras attached to the rocket boosters, so you ride the boosters back to earth after they separate from the shuttle! If those videos didn't get you thinking about our universe...this one will:

Space Party!

 As an incentive the class decided that they wanted a space party before we left for our winter break.  We had the best time!  When they arrived, the room was all spaced out...

The Gemini constellation is on the left, Big Dipper is on the upper middle window, and Orion is on the right.

We had space stations galore!

Some great parent volunteers made Galaxy Dough and Space Gunk for us to explore!

We built a Lego Space Shuttle.

We made cardboard shuttles.

We explored models.

The busiest station was dressing your stuffed animal up like an astronaut!

They were very creative!

They made planet ornaments out of clear bulbs.

Collaboration!

Rolling the paint around for the perfect planet...

We also tried astronaut food.

Some of us loved it...

Some of us, not so much...

All in all, the space party was out of this world!

Hope everyone enjoyed their winter break!

Stretching out the Moment

We have been learning about how good authors stretch out exciting moments to make their stories exciting for their reader.  We read a few books that were excellent examples of this.

The author stretches out the moment where the boy finds a marooned horseshoe crab and has to quickly flip it over in order for it to survive.

The author writes about when the main character gets a chance to ride a high-diving horse and stretches out the moment as the horse is diving from the high platform into the tank below.

Before reading The Girl on the High Diving Horse, we researched a little about Atlantic City and high-diving horses.

We also saw real footage of high-diving horses from the mid-1900s.

We were on the edge of our seats as we read how the little girl in the story got the chance to ride a high-diving horse!

After reading Crab Moon we also became interested in horseshoe crabs and how they have been around for 450 million years.  We also enjoyed watching videos of horseshoe crabs spawning on beaches.

We love reading like authors!

Research Clubs!

Based on interest, we ranked our Research Club choices to get ready for the Investigation Stage.  We were fired up to get researching with our small groups!

We are already learning so much!  Here are some of our Research Club learning/wonder charts.