News for June 25

News for June 25

The class did a wide range of activites this week starting out with our bubble gum research! The students spent Monday morning trying different kinds of bubble gum. First, they learned about the history of bubble gum. Next, they tried 3 kinds of store-bought gum (Bubblicious, Double Bubble and Bubble Yum) and wrote down how it looked, smelled, how easy it was to chew and to blow bubbles. Then they rated the gum out of 20 (where a score of 20 meant it was "perfect"). We then made homemade bubble gum, which was easy and looked a bit like bread dough because there was no food colouring in it. The class felt it tasted good but was not sweet enough. Finally they created a graph to show the students' favourite gum. "Bubble Yum" was the clear favourite with most of the votes.

In math, the students created "flexagons". These are paper math toys that are cut and folded so that it appears that the flat object has four sides. See a video of how this works at the end of this posting. The children also learned a card game to help them practise their place value skills.

The students worked in groups to make movies starring their sock creatures.

Last September, the children created a "time capsule" that contained a video and homemade books containing information (e.g., height, hand size, wishes). We opened the time capsule and shared the information inside and talked about what has changed since the beginning of the year and what has not changed (e.g. names, grade).

The students watched and discussed the movie, "Because of Winn-Dixie" as an example of how a movie is another way to tell a story.

My son, Dean, came into the class with his electric guitar and amplifier to play music for the students and to show them the different kinds of music (e.g. rock, classical) and sounds (e.g. echos, electronic beeps) that can be made using this instrument.

The children planned and created sculptures using cardboard. They also made homemade badge pins and had a chance to make their own trading cards.

On Friday, the class had a chance to see a live corn snake! Edie Shaw brought in "Snakey" the snake and shared lots of information about snakes. Did you know that snakes don't have eyelids and can unhinge their jaws to eat their prey?

During our last computer lab time this year, we reviewed our class blog and reflected on all the activities that we have done in the last 10 months!

Here is the flexagon video: