Sunday, May 31, 2015

Life Long ago.

We are currently learning about what life was like for the first settlers in our area.

Things were very different then!

We visited a one room schoolhouse to get an idea about how school was different.






Students used slates instead of paper, and all different ages were in one room!

We visited a house called The Tiffany House to learn what it was like to live more than one hundred years ago.


 They used stoves that were heated by wood and had to pump water from a well.


 Most houses didn't have electricity.


Children then did not have a lot of the toys that children have today. There was no television, movies, or video games. However, children found things to play with.

One of the things children might have played with is called a thaumatrope. What is a thaumatrope? It was popular in the 1800's and was the very beginnings of animation.



We tried our hand at making thaumatropes to get a better understanding of one of the toys children might have played with long ago. It took a bit of work as they aren't as easy to make as they look! Check out our thaumatropes below.




What do you think of our thaumatropes? If you were to make a thaumatrope, what two images would you choose to try to blend together?

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Croaking About Some of our Favorite Books

One of the activities we have been doing as the year draws to a close is writing book reviews of our favorite books.


We want our book reviews to last and to help people as they choose books, so we have been using the Croak.it app to share our book reviews with others. We take our written review and record it on the app.


After we record the book review we made a QR code for the recording. Then we put the QR Code right on the book. When we finish we put the book back in our classroom library. From now on anyone who looks at that book can listen to a review about it by scanning the QR Code.

Check out some of our favorite books below. Click on the link below the book to listen to the croak.

We love Geronimo Stilton books! Andrew describes one of his favorites.


Geronimo Stilton and Don't Wake the Dinosaur

Anthony really likes Laura Ingalls Wilder books.


Laura and Mary

Claire tells us about the book Judy Moody Declares Independence


Judy Moody Declares Independence

One of our favorite books this year was the book Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Deven chose it right away as her favorite. I'll let her tell you why.

  Sideways Stories from Wayside School

This book is so popular in our classroom that two students wanted to talk about it. Bradyn also chose this book as his favorite. Perfect, as we have more than one copy!


Sideways Stories from Wayside School

Sideways Stories from Wayside School has a few sequels. One of them is Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger. Ruby thinks you should give that book a try.


Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger

 Jaelyn enjoyed the book Mallory on the Move.



Mallory on the Move by Jaelyn

We are adding QR Code reviews to books nearly every day, so there are lots more books in our library with book reviews attached. What fun for next year's class to get to hear the recommendations from this year's class!

If you could choose a book to review to add to our library, what book would you choose? Let us know in the comment section below.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Descriptive Writing Partners

Over the second semester we have been collaborating with a class in Australia on a writing project. I am very excited to show you the finished products. First a little background.

We worked together with Miss Bardem's classroom. They are at the Morang South Primary School in Victoria, Australia.




Our writing project involved drawing a picture and then writing a description of the picture we drew. We used a Padlet to brainstorm ideas about what to draw. It was fun seeing the ideas from our partners in Australia.





After we chose our topic we drew our picture. Then it was time to write our descriptions of our picture for our partners in Australia. It took a long time to write the descriptions. We were concentrating on being very descriptive and detailed!

When we finished we sent our descriptions off to our friends in Australia and shortly after that we got their descriptions to see if we could draw their pictures. Click here to visit Miss Bardem's classroom blog to see how close we got!

Read below for our written description and both our drawing and the drawing from our friends in Australia. Our drawings are on the left or on the top. The drawings from the students in Australia are on the right or on the bottom.


Kaydance's description of a house.

Kayla's description of a pizza.


Kaiya's description of a sunflower.

Andrew's description of a rain drop shower.
Anthony's description of a steam engine.
Conner's description of a boxcar.
Deven's description of a cake.


Gavin's description of a soccer ball.
Ruby's description of a pizza.
Ryan's description of StampyLongnose (from Minecraft).

Sophie's description of a sunflower.
Tessa's description of a seahorse.
Jaelyn's description of a birthday cake.

Claire's description of a face.
Sara Jean's description of a honey bee.
Bradyn's description of an iPhone 6.

Jocelyn's description of a bumblebee.
Lexi's description of a sunflower.
Jack's description of a pizza and a piece of cheese.
Kiersten's description of a robot.

Many, many thanks to our partners at Morang South Primary School in Australia. We had a wonderful time with this project and look forward to collaborating again!
 

What do you think? How did we do with being specific with our descriptions? We would love to hear what you think of our writing project.