Finally: A Sunny Day!

I have been waiting for a few weeks to get a totally sunny day so we can head outside to do our shadow inquiry all day.  Today was the day...67 degrees and sunny!

We headed out about every two hours today to do a Human Sundial experiment.  Each partner group stood on the same "X" and traced their shadow at various points in the day.  We started by going out at about 8:30.

Then we measured how long our shadow was and wrote down observations.

Finally, we measured how many fists high the sun was in the sky.

When we went out again at 10:30, many of the kids were confused!  They couldn't get their shadows to match up!

By 12:30, the sun was many fists high in the sky.

Our shadows were also really short and fat!

We were predicting that at 2:30 our shadows would be even shorter, but we were surprised that they were longer--about the same size as at 10:30am.

We also noticed that we had to turn our bodies to the side to measure the sun height with our fists.  The sun was in the other part of the sky.

However, some of us couldn't make our 2:30 shadow tracings!  Aw....too close to the building.  :(

We reflected on all of our shadow tracings throughout the day, how they changed, and how the sun affected them.

We loved Shadow Inquiry Day!

Last year I took this picture of Mrs. Zoll.

What time of day do you think it is?  Why?

Map Inquiry

A member of the school board was curious about inquiry and was able to take some time to pop into Room 408 to see what we were up to.  When he came we were doing a maps mini-inquiry.  The class and I had collected various maps for our inquiry--some students brought in atlases, some brought Wisconsin maps, and some even brought in a map from our recent field trip to the Children's Museum!

When we first immersed ourselves in maps, we were so intrigued with our personal place on our planet.  Students were really focused on finding their houses on google maps.

This led to us noticing that we could get a "street view" as well as a "bird's eye view."  Some students created these views of their houses, of the Statue of Liberty, their neighborhoods, their bedrooms, and even a table in our classroom!  

Some students started noticing that maps have little pictures or symbols on them to help us find places.  We found the map keys or "legends" which told us what these little pictures meant.

Today we had a map symbol scavenger hunt and found lots of cool symbols in just 20 minutes!

Maps help us find out about places in our world!

Petting Zoo!

Friday morning we were able to attend the petting zoo at SCHS.
Here is a video of our adventures:

More Light & Sound Exploration

Today we added prisms to our immersion stations, as well as several more cool instruments and shadow puppets that Mrs. Fernandez brought in.

Room 408 has started noticing that we can change how light and sound behaves, that some things block light (scientists call it opaque), some things let some light through (scientists call it translucent), and that things are vibrating when they are making a sound.  We have started charting some of these "Big Ideas" and we're adding more noticings every day!

Rainn and Shealee were the first to notice vibrations and taught us about this "Big Idea."

Lucy has noticed that there are different "layers" in lots of the instruments we are exploring and that the sound changes based on the length of the "layer." These are the instruments that she has noticed what she calls "layers." Can you see them?

Ariah, Allie, and Keira noticed that when we touch an instrument the sound just stops right away.  They demonstrated with the Thunder Drum and taught us about their "Big Idea."

Here is another video of the second day of our Light & Sound Immersion.