Published Authors!

We have been working on fixing and fancying up our favorite personal narrative stories to publish.

We even added blurbs on the back!

We were so excited to read each other's stories.

 We are so proud of our work as published authors!

Dick Proenneke

We have been reading Little House on the Prairie during our Snack/Read Aloud time.

The Ingalls family traveled all the way from the big woods of Wisconsin to a homestead near Independence, Kansas.

We have gotten to one of my favorite parts of the book, which is when Pa builds their log cabin.

Undoubtedly at this point in the book after seeing the above picture, one of the kids makes a connection about Lincoln Logs.

I pulled out the Lincoln Logs from our storage room and the kids started building and exploring. 

Here is a picture of the re-creation of Little House on the Prairie in Kansas, near Independence.

Next, I introduced them to a movie about a man named Dick Proenneke.  

He was a man who decided to test himself to see if he could live off the land, all alone in Alaska.  He built a cabin from scratch, using only hand tools--he brought the steel parts of the tools, but even built the handles of the tools with local wood.  We learned that he was a mathematician when he measured and constructed the cabin, as well as a writer because he recorded his life and experiences in journals.

Today we got to see him building his cabin in the documentary Alone in the Wilderness.

The kids were in awe as we watched him chop and saw, carry tree trunks, construct his log cabin, build a fireplace, make furniture...just like Pa in Little House on the Prairie!

To learn more about Dick Proenneke and his adventures in the Alaskan Wilderness:

click these words to learn more about purchasing the documentary

click these words to learn more about his life

click these words to be taken to the National Park website where his cabin is located

click these words to go to a youtube search for various videos about Dick Proenneke

or watch this youtube video below:

Do you think you could do something like Dick Proenneke?

Activating our Space Schema

Before we get started on our first big inquiry on space, I like to discuss activating our schema.  When we activate our schema, we access any and all "space files" in our brains.  We read a few books like Sun & Moon by Marcus Pfister.  I like this book because it has a lot of little facts built into the fictional story, and it gets kids thinking and sparks ideas of what they think they already know (schema).

We brainstorm a few ideas together, and watch the following video.


This video never fails to intrigue them and activate more schema.

 Then, we go off and illustrate some of our schema.

Once we have worked on our schema, we walk around and see what schema others have.

Next, we need to talk about what resources will help us in our mission to learn about space.
This is the list that they came up with (you can tell they have had many experiences with smaller inquiries!):

We discussed areas of our classroom library that we would likely find books about space. Then, we worked as a team to gather book resources in our own classroom.  Collaboration!

We're ready to start our research!

Germs!

Our school nurse, Ms. Demerath, came to give us a talk on handwashing today.

We learned how to be Germ Stoppers and saw a video about handwashing.

We got squirted with "germs" and talked about proper handwashing techniques...

...and we got to see how many "germs" we had on our hands under a black light.

We did our best to wash our hands thoroughly...

...and checked our handwashing skills by looking under the black light again!

It was tricky to make sure we got all the "germs!"

November Learning Mural

It's Learning Mural Day again! I can't believe that it's already the first day of December!
We brainstormed ways that we got smarter during the month of November.

We partnered up and created representations of our learning.

We are getting so good at collaborating and everything is going so smoothly!

Here is our finished Learning Mural: