Living or Nonliving?

We are just beginning our animal inquiry.  One of the first questions that the kids had was how you know if something is alive or not.  What makes a living thing a living thing?

We pretty much knew that plants and animals are living, but we weren't sure what the rules were for how you know if something is alive.

 During reading workshop we read books that had plants and animals and kept a list of how we know if something is living.

We came up with the following list, as we brainstormed ideas.

Next, we used our PebbleGo resource to confirm our thinking or to categorize it as a misconception.
If we found evidence of something on our list, we put a check next to it to confirm our thinking.  If we couldn't find evidence of something on our list, we put an X on it to mark it as a misconception.

We came up with this list.  We had some great discussion about the three items in the circle.  We agreed that living things come in different sizes, colors, and kinds but so do nonliving things.  We will be thinking about that as we do further research.

We also found out that living things have a life cycle.  We'll have to add that to our list!

Read Across America Week

This week was Read Across America week and we had lots of fun dress up days.

Friday we had Pajama Day and we read lots of Dr. Seuss books!

We were also lucky enough this week to have Josiah's dad come in and read to us!

There is something about Dr. Seuss, isn't there?

February Learning Mural

We can't believe that it is already March!
March came in like a lion with a lot of snow, and it also reminded us that it is time to reflect on all the learning that we did in February.  This was our shortest month so far!

We are getting to be pros at collaborating!

Here is our finished February Learning Mural!

Collaboration & Charlie's Board Report

This month Charlie gave the student board report at our LEADS school board meeting.  We decided that we wanted to teach the board about how we collaborate in Room 408.  We each created a piece of writing that showed how we collaborate.

Unfortunately on the day of the board report, I was sick and was all ready to postpone Charlie's report.  However, like the trooper he is, he told his mom that he wanted to do it--even though Mrs. Henning couldn't be there.  (!)  He got all dressed up in his church clothes and confidently entered the room where "he was going to teach."

Here he is, teaching those school board members about how we do collaboration in Room 408:

Click here to see Charlie's presentation.

You can also click here to see how Charlie answered comments and questions for 11 minutes.

Way to go, Charlie!

100th Day Fun

We started our 100th Day celebration by bringing in collections of 100 items.

Early in the day I gave the children a "100 Contract" filled with fun activities.  Each child set a personal goal of how many activities they thought they could complete by the end of the day.

We had a great afternoon of fun, thinking about 100!

We tried to see if we could fit 100 drops of water on a coin.

We made art projects of our portraits in 100 years.

We did 100 math problems.

We made 100 Day glasses.

We flipped a coin 100 times and tallied the results.

We wrote 100 words.

We did a data collection activity.

We researched what life was like 100 years ago.

We wrote books called Thinking About 100.

We did 100 grid puzzles.

We did 100 jumping jacks.

(Check out the video below to witness how quickly the energy of a 7-year-old can wane by doing 100 jumping jacks!  LOL)

We even observed 100 seconds of ***SILENCE***!!!  I swear it is true.  They were all totally silent for 100 seconds.  The proof is in the video below.


Happy 100th Day!