Measurement!

Good Afternoon CFI Families,

This week has been a blur of working on the in class portion of our last expert projects. There are already some great examples of books based off of each author’s craft that have been made. In exploring authors together and making a list of examples of author’s craft choices we listed everything from using alliteration and onomatopoeia, to rhyming, speech bubbles, and the genre or type of book the author likes to write. There are now new Pete the Cat adventures, mysteries, and Diaries of a Wimpy Kid books being created in our classroom each unique to its new author. It is so exciting to see their writing grow in these new and amazing ways inspired by the authors we all know and love. It will be exciting to see the combination of these works with the biographical information on each author. We will start sharing these on Monday and will have a share fair with the school after we have finished sharing all of them the next week.

In math we have been focusing on measurement. We started by looking at comparing the sizes of our growing plants. We have been graphing the growth of one of the bean plants and watched as it shot up from 3 inches to now 11 inches. We have discussed standard and nonstandard units of measurement and found that the smaller the unit, the larger the number needed to traverse the same distance. For example it took more of Rebecca’s feet to walk across the room than it did mine. Today we also measured around the room with different items as our units. From measuring tapes and rulers, to nonstandard units like paper clips and seashells, we have lots of data to look at on Monday. We will compare and analyze our results when we return from the weekend.

We have really jumped into learning about rocks and soils. We have looked at the soil samples from spring break, found and compared rocks from outside, and explored many books on rocks. We even investigated some interesting questions such as whether sand is really rock and were amazed to learn that yes sand is rock but we went even further to discover that when it is superheated it turns into glass. We looked at how this is seen naturally when lightning hits beaches and learned that it creates Fulgurite. When we follow our wonderings we learn such interesting information! We will continue exploring rocks and soils next week.

That’s all for now but thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Upcoming Dates:

May 26th- Sandhills Library Trip and Splash Day

May 29th- No School- Memorial Day

May 30th- 5th Grade Graduation

May 31st- Half Day

June 1st- Half Day and Last Day of School