Lots of Water Under the Bridge

It's been a long time since we've posted an entry. A month, to be exact. Lots of things have happened during that time. Mrs. Bruno's class would like to reflect on the past four weeks.

We had spring break a couple of weeks ago. Some of us went to Orlando, some to the beach, and some to the mountains. Others visited with family and logged lots of books for our March reading program!

We've learned about the moon's phases and how it goes through a cycle. There are eight phases that occur over about 29 days. We've been observing the moon each night and recording it in our moon journal. Over the last few days we've had so many clouds and storms that we haven't been able to see the moon. We know, however, that the moon is still there, even though it's not visible. The moon orbits the Earth, while the Earth orbits the sun. We've also learned about the moon's craters, caused by meteors. We love studying space, and we think it's the best science unit so far!

We are also working on a space project. We're split into bunches of different groups to study different aspects of space. There's a group studying Project Mercury, the project where America got animals and people into space to orbit the Earth. One group is studying telescopes. The biggest land-telescope is in Puerto Rico. The largest space-telescope is the Hubble Telescope. We watched a video of the new spacecraft that will replace the ending shuttle program. We saw some short videos of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. We also looked at a powerpoint that put the size of Earth into perspective for us. It also showed us how little the sun, our star, is compared to other stars in the universe. We also discussed the eight planets in our solar system.

March is also Youth Art Month. Our class made yams to celebrate. John Patrick made Admiral Yambar. Daniel had a yamburger and fries. Caroline's yam was a porcupine. Owen made a yamamma! Samantha's yam was a sea lion. Raya had a yam dog. Bella had a fashion designer yam.

Book Character Dress Up Day

WE CAN'T BELIEVE WE DIDN'T TAKE PICTURES TODAY!!!!

Today we dressed up like characters from some of our favorite books. We had Flat Stanley to Fancy Nancy and everything in between. Unfortunately, Mrs. Bruno forgot to take pictures to post to the blog.

What we DID manage to do was make commercials for our favorite books. Those who wanted to do so posted those commercials on Ustream. Check out our site at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jennifer-bruno to see those commercials! Mrs. Bruno even dressed up like a crazy book character. Check it out!!!!

Happy Friday!

Today was a special treat for us!!! High schoolers from Mr. Bond's engineering class introduced us to simple machines. We know that machines are supposed to make work easier, but we actually experienced it today!!!!! We're very grateful that Mr. Bond's class took time to come and teach us about simple machines. Here's what the class had to say about our visitors, as well as other things that happened in class today!

Jonathan said that we got to learn about famous Americans. Evan learned how to do a math problem to determine his famous American's age when he died. He also sketched his famous American to decide what his poster would look like. Jacob enjoyed learning about simple machines in the gym this morning. Elliott's favorite simple machine was the wheel and axle because he liked racing. Jay's favorite one was the pulley, where children lifted him on a machine. Robert liked that one, too, because he liked being able to lift a high school student. Emily's favorite station was the lever center. She liked it because she saw that using a machine to lift a person was easier than picking up the person by herself. Kaylee liked the nail center. It showed how a wedge made work easier. Kendall liked the inclined plane center because she found it easier to push the crate up a ramp than to try to lift the weight straight up! Jonathan liked the lever center, as well. Lilley liked the screw simple machine. She learned that the bigger the handle, the easier it is to use. She learned that a screw was just an incline plane wrapped around a cylinder.

We brainstormed about all of the simple machines that we use daily and don't even recognize. When Mrs. Bruno had her ankle reconstructed last year, her students had to push her up the handicap ramp in her wheelchair to take her to lunch. The ramp is an inclined plane. When we play on seesaws, we're using a simple machine called a lever. We use pulleys to take things from the ground to the top of our treehouses. We use nails, which are wedges, to hammer things together! If we chop wood with an axe, we're also using a wedge. When our parents pulled us in little red wagons, they were using wheels and axles.

Also, congrats to John Patrick for the best estimate of how many books would be sold at the book fair. He won $25 worth of books!!! Yea, John Patrick!!!!

Thursday, Feb. 17

Thursday was a very full, but fun, day. We crossed curriculum a lot in math and science, using our science investigations of solids and liquids to help us study our math fractions unit.

Caroline liked her fraction homework where we colored parts of geometric shapes. Daniel liked helping Mrs. Bruno out by separating solids. Mrs. Bruno needed a soup mixtures of beans, rice, and cornmeal separated back out into the five original ingredients. The challenge was finding the right tool to separate each item because picking out by hand would have been gross and taken hours!!!!! In Mrs. Johnson's class, Elizabeth wrote poetry about the ocean, which holds the largest amount of liquid in the world. Samantha enjoyed putting solids into liquids and seeing what happened. Bella had so much fun this week and learned lots about solids and liquids!!!!

Properties of Liquids

Today we did experiments with liquids to test their properties. We looked at fabric softener, cooking oil, plain water, colored water, liquid soap, corn syrup, and detergent. We tested to see if each was colored, transparent, viscous, bubbly, translucent, foamy, and/or opaque.

Kaylee learned that liquids take the shape of their container. Evan learned about properties of liquids like viscous, translucent, transparent, foamy, and bubbly. Robert learned that gases will take up any amount of space that you'll let it. Gases have volume that changes. Kendall said that the volume of liquids stays the same, no matter what container you put them in. Jacob learned that a solid has its own shape.

Ellen said we used bottles to look at properties of liquids. Elizabeth learned that sometimes liquids are viscous and stick to the sides of bottles. Caroline says that liquids take the shape of their containers. Samantha found out that solids stay the same shape unless they undergo some type of change. Owen learned that a solid can turn into a liquid and a liquid can turn into a solid. Daniel learned that liquids can be different colors.

Valentine's Day

What a Monday! We had a full of science, wrapping up our study of the properties of solids and moving to the properties of liquids. We constructed towers made from solids, using what we knew about them to see who could make the tallest one! Then, of course, we had our Valentine's party, too! Here are some of the students' thoughts about the day!

Ellen thought the Valentine's party was great! We made ladybug tic-tac-toe boards and ate yummy ice cream and cookies!!!! Elizabeth said that Phoebe's babies (the hummingbird we watch via live web cam) fledged today!!! We wish them the best of luck!!!! Eli says that he learned you must look at different properties to determine what a liquid is!!! Caroline enjoyed building the towers!

February 10, 2011

Mrs. Johnson's class shared their thoughts about the day:

Kaylee says it was a special day today because we got to do math centers again. Morgan was excited to get to practice Math Magician. Elliott was today's Math Magician "king." Ellis liked the centers we did. Evan liked the day because the centers were fun. Carter liked the symmetry activity because he got to create a symmetrical cow face. Lilley is excited that our snow was "real" snow instead of ice like last time. Robert said today was fantastic because he enjoyed drawing a symmetrical snowman. Jay enjoyed the centers!!! Allie liked learning a new vocabulary game on the Wii!!! Kendall had an amazing day because she learned new things in class like making lines of symmetry! Brady said today was a blast because he got to play Math Magician. Jonathan liked today because each person got to go to each center.